Radio Product of the Year 2010
While the price-tag puts the Pure Avanti Flow firmly in the territory of many micro-systems, its configuration suggests it's more of a rival for something like the Roberts Sound 53 we awarded four stars to – a fixed-speaker desktop/worktop design.
But where the Roberts featured a CD player alongside its DAB/FM reception and iPod dock, the Avanti Flow goes without CD playback and counters with wireless internet radio reception.
Internet radio as standard
This is a thoroughly thought-through device. Your £280 buys iPod connectivity (including the iPhone, provided it's in 'airport' mode), DAB/FM radio, wireless connectivity, 3.5mm in- and outputs, remote control, and two 3in full-range drivers and a 5.25in downward-firing subwoofer driven by a claimed 75 watts of power. It's glossily finished and substantially built, and the display is bright and clear.
With an iPod secured in the cradle, the Pure sounds punchy and composed. Headhunter's Physics Impulse (a 128kbps file) is a martial test of timing and attack, but the Avanti Flow is unfazed – a switch to an uncompressed copy of the altogether subtler Joan as Police Woman's Anyone and the Pure offers unflustered musicality and eloquent midrange communication.
Radio reception is laudable
FM, and to a lesser extent DAB, reception is equally laudable. Radio broadcasts are crisp, spacious and poised – talk radio sounds particularly immediate. The Pure is a tenacious tuner, picking up signals in obscure parts of our listening rooms where other radios give up the ghost.
Internet radio is the party piece, though, and here too the Avanti Flow scores highly. Easy to navigate and uncomplicated to administer, the Pure is basically a simple link to a whole world of radio, from Venezuela to the Vatican – providing you have a wireless network to attach it to, of course.
Aside from a lack of outright volume, there's very little here worthy of censure – so if the ideal of a three-piece micro system doesn't appeal but internet radio does, you'll need to put this Pure on your shortlist.
