Well, I picked up a myfi a couple of weeks ago.
I have been thinking about satellite radio for some time. The radio stations here all appear to be owned by clear channel, which has apparently assigned each station 20 songs to play endlessly and 90% of airtime from 4-7pm and 7-9am spent explaining inaccurate news and replaying the EXACT same blurb from the exact same weatherman across all channels.
OK so now you understand my motivation. Obviously there was some dilbert-esque gadget needs being fulfilled too. Which explains why I chose a myfi, which is about the size of a bukly mp3 player, with a built in xm antenna, and some vcr-like capabilities.
Most of the music I listen to is listened to in the car to and from work. Occasionally I listen to music at work, or at home while on the computer.
The myfi comes with a decent amount of accessories. You get a car antenna (a tiny little magnetic thing), a car cradle (required if using the car antenna), a car charger, a home antenna, a "clip-on" antenna that looks similar to the battery pack of my iriver slim-x cd player, a couple of car mounts (one that attaches to a vent, one that has sticky tape), a home cradle, crappy earphones, a home charger, a remote control (with batteries), and a cassette adapter.
There is plenty of documentation as well. One grip I have is that the manual says in the "what's included" portion that velcro strips are included. The "quick reference" card does not, and is correct. It would have been nice to have some velcro strips.
I bought the unit at circuit city, and the salesperson there told me that I should activate by phone ($14.99) and not over the internet ($9.99) because the internet can take up to a day. On the website, they say it should only take 1 hour and if it takes longer, call them. I chose the internet. 30 minutes later, it was activated. In order to activate, you must be receiving a signal. I hooked up the home cradle and antenna. The home antenna is actually not as good as the car one. I have to twist and turn the thing around to get 3 bars when pointing out of a window.
The first experience with the content was that it had a lot of channels, the sound quality was (as expected) better than radio, worse than a cd player, and it was hard to find the right stations for me. I listened to a lot of XMU and Fred for a while. A couple weeks later, I find myself on XM Cafe, XMU, Mix, and the comedy channel the most. The unit performs quite well when there is a constant 3 bar signal.
In the car was the first struggle. The vent mount, which was realistically the only mount I could use if I wanted to be able to return the item within 30 days, was a bit flaky. The unit is in no danger of falling out, but the vent mount is just a bit wobbly. I placed the antenna on the front dashboard inside the car. I did not want to have it professionally installed since I wanted to possibly be able to return it in 30 days. From my testing, it appears that leaving it inside versus placing it on the roof has very little discernible difference in signal strength. The greatest gains in signal strength came when putting it on the rear dash, probably because that is where the fm antenna is (in the rear window).
In the office, the unit does not work at all. I have an east facing window near me, and it gets no signal. When walking around outside briefly, the signal is decent, though the personal antenna is not as strong as the others. in theory I could put the unit in someone's office and listen to it over an FM transmission, if I were so inclined.
On the outskirts of town, where there are no tall buildings, the signal is generally quite strong. There are a few very small spots where the signal is interrupted. Strangely, one such spot is at a random intersection with no tall buildings. It's important for me to note that the signal in all cases is better in strength than my regular fm one was, probably because the in-window antenna was weak. On my commute (far east side of town to downtown), the signal is clear up until I am right in the middle of downtown, where it breaks up occasionally (in the same spots).
The home antenna can be a pain to keep oriented if you have cats. They will occasionally brush it and knock it into one bar strength. It would have been nice if the home antenna had some sort of mounting capaibility, perhaps one where I could place it high up on a window, or at least lock it down enough so that it would be moved around by a slight tug on the wire.
Until I had set up all my presets, the unit was clunky to use. The interface is very similar to a zen mp3 player's interface, with a dial resembling a volume dial being the primary mode of navigation. It would seem that it is supposed to be able to display what content is on other channels as you browse without switching, but I could not get this to work. I ended up using the remote a lot to change channels until I set the presets. There are 10 digits on the unit itself, and you can have 3 banks of presets. This system works pretty well, except the 5 key seems to take more pressure before it responds than the other keys (maybe 0 as well).
Each station tends to have a different level of quality to the signal. Of my frequently listened to stations, Mix has the best signal, and The Loft or comedy have the worst. I don't mind the loss in signal quality in comedy, it's just people talking and it's relatively clean. The loft can be disappointing at times. Within a particular station, some songs are sharper than others.
The variety is quite good. Stations like mix obviously replay songs, but it's nowhere NEAR as bad as the local stations here. Stations like XMU in particular almost never repeat songs. All in all the variety is much better than anything in the locals here. There are DJs on some, but not all, stations.
The recording capabilities of the unit are a slightly nice addition, but barely add much to the unit. There are many problems. The most glaring one to me is that it seems as though you can only record content on the same day. I had printed out the radio classics schedule, hoping to record some orson welles radio plays. Furthermore, the unit must be turned off (like a VCR) in order for the program to work. You can schedule recurring recordings, but again only on the same day. Maybe I'm missing something.
There are some advanced features I'm still learning. There's a "memory" button which will remember an artist, and apparently can notify you when that artist is playing somewhere. This has proved useful a couple of times when listening to XMU. XMU is advertised as being new material similar to what you might find in colleges. So it's nice to hit the memory button and then later go onto amazon and sample a cd of theirs.
The unit has built-in FM trasmitter support. Since I use the cassette adapter, I haven't tried this yet.
With the weak recording interface, occasional signal loss, and occasionally dissapointing sound quality (though always better than the local FM), the myfi is not perfect. For the first several days I was not sure if I would be returning it or not. Now, being addicted to XM comedy and XMu, I can say that I will definitely be keeping it, but this is mostly due to the content, and not due to any particular feature of the myfi.
Wow that is a long review! Let me know if you have any questions.
Summary: After two weeks I am fully convinced that xm's content is worth it. The myfi is probably the best unit for me, but it has flaws. The recording software needs 3 or 4 more revisions before it is truly useful. The signal gets dropped in many places downtown (no repeaters), but is good elsewhere.
I have been thinking about satellite radio for some time. The radio stations here all appear to be owned by clear channel, which has apparently assigned each station 20 songs to play endlessly and 90% of airtime from 4-7pm and 7-9am spent explaining inaccurate news and replaying the EXACT same blurb from the exact same weatherman across all channels.
OK so now you understand my motivation. Obviously there was some dilbert-esque gadget needs being fulfilled too. Which explains why I chose a myfi, which is about the size of a bukly mp3 player, with a built in xm antenna, and some vcr-like capabilities.
Most of the music I listen to is listened to in the car to and from work. Occasionally I listen to music at work, or at home while on the computer.
The myfi comes with a decent amount of accessories. You get a car antenna (a tiny little magnetic thing), a car cradle (required if using the car antenna), a car charger, a home antenna, a "clip-on" antenna that looks similar to the battery pack of my iriver slim-x cd player, a couple of car mounts (one that attaches to a vent, one that has sticky tape), a home cradle, crappy earphones, a home charger, a remote control (with batteries), and a cassette adapter.
There is plenty of documentation as well. One grip I have is that the manual says in the "what's included" portion that velcro strips are included. The "quick reference" card does not, and is correct. It would have been nice to have some velcro strips.
I bought the unit at circuit city, and the salesperson there told me that I should activate by phone ($14.99) and not over the internet ($9.99) because the internet can take up to a day. On the website, they say it should only take 1 hour and if it takes longer, call them. I chose the internet. 30 minutes later, it was activated. In order to activate, you must be receiving a signal. I hooked up the home cradle and antenna. The home antenna is actually not as good as the car one. I have to twist and turn the thing around to get 3 bars when pointing out of a window.
The first experience with the content was that it had a lot of channels, the sound quality was (as expected) better than radio, worse than a cd player, and it was hard to find the right stations for me. I listened to a lot of XMU and Fred for a while. A couple weeks later, I find myself on XM Cafe, XMU, Mix, and the comedy channel the most. The unit performs quite well when there is a constant 3 bar signal.
In the car was the first struggle. The vent mount, which was realistically the only mount I could use if I wanted to be able to return the item within 30 days, was a bit flaky. The unit is in no danger of falling out, but the vent mount is just a bit wobbly. I placed the antenna on the front dashboard inside the car. I did not want to have it professionally installed since I wanted to possibly be able to return it in 30 days. From my testing, it appears that leaving it inside versus placing it on the roof has very little discernible difference in signal strength. The greatest gains in signal strength came when putting it on the rear dash, probably because that is where the fm antenna is (in the rear window).
In the office, the unit does not work at all. I have an east facing window near me, and it gets no signal. When walking around outside briefly, the signal is decent, though the personal antenna is not as strong as the others. in theory I could put the unit in someone's office and listen to it over an FM transmission, if I were so inclined.
On the outskirts of town, where there are no tall buildings, the signal is generally quite strong. There are a few very small spots where the signal is interrupted. Strangely, one such spot is at a random intersection with no tall buildings. It's important for me to note that the signal in all cases is better in strength than my regular fm one was, probably because the in-window antenna was weak. On my commute (far east side of town to downtown), the signal is clear up until I am right in the middle of downtown, where it breaks up occasionally (in the same spots).
The home antenna can be a pain to keep oriented if you have cats. They will occasionally brush it and knock it into one bar strength. It would have been nice if the home antenna had some sort of mounting capaibility, perhaps one where I could place it high up on a window, or at least lock it down enough so that it would be moved around by a slight tug on the wire.
Until I had set up all my presets, the unit was clunky to use. The interface is very similar to a zen mp3 player's interface, with a dial resembling a volume dial being the primary mode of navigation. It would seem that it is supposed to be able to display what content is on other channels as you browse without switching, but I could not get this to work. I ended up using the remote a lot to change channels until I set the presets. There are 10 digits on the unit itself, and you can have 3 banks of presets. This system works pretty well, except the 5 key seems to take more pressure before it responds than the other keys (maybe 0 as well).
Each station tends to have a different level of quality to the signal. Of my frequently listened to stations, Mix has the best signal, and The Loft or comedy have the worst. I don't mind the loss in signal quality in comedy, it's just people talking and it's relatively clean. The loft can be disappointing at times. Within a particular station, some songs are sharper than others.
The variety is quite good. Stations like mix obviously replay songs, but it's nowhere NEAR as bad as the local stations here. Stations like XMU in particular almost never repeat songs. All in all the variety is much better than anything in the locals here. There are DJs on some, but not all, stations.
The recording capabilities of the unit are a slightly nice addition, but barely add much to the unit. There are many problems. The most glaring one to me is that it seems as though you can only record content on the same day. I had printed out the radio classics schedule, hoping to record some orson welles radio plays. Furthermore, the unit must be turned off (like a VCR) in order for the program to work. You can schedule recurring recordings, but again only on the same day. Maybe I'm missing something.
There are some advanced features I'm still learning. There's a "memory" button which will remember an artist, and apparently can notify you when that artist is playing somewhere. This has proved useful a couple of times when listening to XMU. XMU is advertised as being new material similar to what you might find in colleges. So it's nice to hit the memory button and then later go onto amazon and sample a cd of theirs.
The unit has built-in FM trasmitter support. Since I use the cassette adapter, I haven't tried this yet.
With the weak recording interface, occasional signal loss, and occasionally dissapointing sound quality (though always better than the local FM), the myfi is not perfect. For the first several days I was not sure if I would be returning it or not. Now, being addicted to XM comedy and XMu, I can say that I will definitely be keeping it, but this is mostly due to the content, and not due to any particular feature of the myfi.
Wow that is a long review! Let me know if you have any questions.
Summary: After two weeks I am fully convinced that xm's content is worth it. The myfi is probably the best unit for me, but it has flaws. The recording software needs 3 or 4 more revisions before it is truly useful. The signal gets dropped in many places downtown (no repeaters), but is good elsewhere.
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