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“Buyer Beware!”

written by on 31/12/2011

I suspect as with many people, when making a purchase, I generally make my decision based on price, maybe vendor's/seller's reputation & good Vs bad reviews etc. So if the bad reviews seem like just a few isolated cases or just a few unlucky people, I usually take a punt & go ahead with the purchase. A big mistake in this case.
What I would urge people to do, before purchasing a Pure DAB radio, is to really read all the forums regarding the problems & also to pay particular attention to reviews that have been written atleast a couple of years done the line.

Whether it's after 2, 3 or if you're Very lucky, 4 years down the line, problems ALWAYS seem to arise with these Radios. It doesn't matter which model you buy, they all seem to go wrong. Screen freezes accompanied by the buttons becoming unresponsive rendering them useless, are very common, almost ubiquitous in some cases.

I bought my unit on 20-12-09 & after turning on this morning is was stuck on the upgrade screen. I was informed that removing the power cable & waiting a while before reattaching normally works but there was no change. I was also told to try a reset but as it's locked, pressing the buttons has no effect, so that wasn't possible. I've tried downloading the relevant firmware update from the Pure website, installing & connecting it to the PC but that didn't work either.

I've experienced other little niggles like the clock being out & a dimmly lit screen but as the unit has only been used as radio & not as an alarm clock, it didn't bother me too much.
In the 2 years that we've owned the radio, the longest it's ever been switched on, at any one time, was for an hour at the most & maybe once a week if that. The rest of the time it's been on standby. Surpirsingly I've had cheap Chinese products which have outlived this & at under a third of the price.

It's not always easy to trust what you read on the web but I've recently found out that shortly after we purchased ours, each of my relatives who have also owned Pure radios, ranging from 3-5 years(varying models),have all had the same screen freezing issues. Just in different modes & on differing dates. AFAIC it's not just a few unlucky buyers, it's simply a unreliable product.

Unfortunately as with most tech & appliances these days, despite it's cost, it will fail due to inferior parts, firmware or both. It's pretty much a waste of time contacting Pure's Support so save yourself the bother & buy another brand with a better reliability record like say...any other brand. :D