Yuraku Yur.Beat Fusion Stream

by Juniper Foo |

In journalism as in technology, one learns early to K.I.S.S. ass. That is, you Keep It Short and Simple, or end up feeling like an ass. So what's with the complexly convoluted naming convention from some tech vendors? HP chose the long and winding road naming its new iPaqs. Now here's a product from Singapore-based company Yuraku opting for a similar treatment. Who needs a lobotomy after that?

Product name aside, Yaraku claims this is the world's first portable wireless Internet radio with full multmedia features. And we'll admit it's pretty darn tiny, about the size of a Creative Zen Digital Media Player. Make no mistake here. The Yur.Beat Fusion Stream's claim to fame is really as a portable Internet radio, and there lies the catch. Want Internet radio? Well, you need a wireless hotspot to connect to. Although once online, you can tune into about 10,000 Internet radio stations via the vTuner service. When we tested it on our office Wi-Fi, Mumix Radio from Japan came in loud and clear, as did a few other world channels. But expect some connection lag, lost signals and buffering to occur occasionally.

Fortunately, there's FM radio if you're commuting and can't get onboard the island's Wireless@SG broadband.

As expected of a music device, there's a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack for third-party ear cans. We're told a pair of headsets ship with this, although just not the Sennheiser-branded ones bundled for Europe. Other than that, this works like one would expect of most multimedia devices. There's support for MP3, WMA, OGG, AAC, WAV, ADPCM and AIFF music files, as well as MP4 and AVI movies. There's a photo album with slideshow feature and a nifty media streamer to stream music or data from any shared drive. There's also a microSD card slot for up to 2GB, which you'll need as there's just 1GB of internal NAND flash.

Overall, this is a simply built device. What you see is what you get, starting with the six buttons below the display. Navigation is via the Forward/Backward/Menu and Play (enter) keys. The microSD slot sits on the bottom edge, while at the top you'll find the power/hold/reset buttons. The left top edge holds the mini-USB port and headphone jack. And that's it, folks.

According to Yuraku, this offers up to 8 hours for Internet radio, 8 hours max. for music streaming, up to 25 hours for MP3 playback, and up to 4 hours of video playback. Charging is via USB, so you may want to invest in a mains adapter just to give you more flexibility than the notebook or PC port. Now here's something odd we encountered. Charging the device appears to lock down the player. No amount of key pressing would bring up the menu. We had to unplug and power it on again before we could access anything.

The 2.4-inch LCD display is not the best we've seen. So just remember that this is first and foremost a portable Internet radio, and you'll be fine with that. Not to mention being spoiled rotten for choice when it comes to those 10,000 music stations.



Price: S$299 (US$)
Availability: At Harvey Norman outlets in Singapore and parts of Europe
Device: Portable wireless Internet radio
Specs: 1GB NAND flash, low power Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, Wi-Fi auto configuration & easy wizard, Internet radio, media streaming, music playback, photo album, video playback functions, FM radio (US/Europe, Japan), real-time clock, 2.4-inch color TFT LCD, built-in rechargeable Li-polymer battery, microSD card support, USB 2.0 High Speed, mini-USB port for charging, 84 x 63 x 15mm, 55g

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