Arcam rCube review on Pocket-lint: "the rCube’s promise of lossless music streaming dimension is exciting"

Great review of the Arcam rCube on Pocket-lint from November 18, 2010. Read the entire review. 

My favorite section: "With millions of us having ditched our CD collections this kind of product ought to do well with people searching for a modern Hi-Fi system. Small, perfectly formed and portable, the rCube’s promise of lossless music streaming dimension is exciting and makes the £500 price tag appear good value - this is a pretty serious Hi-Fi component, after all."

Find out the cost of the Arcam rCube on Amazon UK >>

Here's an excerpt: 

"Sick of those £50 iPod docks that spew out meek music? Then try Arcam’s rCube for size; Wi-Fi meets Hi-Fi on this ‘pod-friendly speaker that’s about as high-end as it gets at this size. Ready for more good news? It’s portable. Yup - unplug the 5kg rCube from the mains and its internal Lithium-ion battery will keep going for between 4 and 8 hours. There’s even a grip-hole hidden just behind the iPod dock for carrying the thing around.

The ability to play music from an Apple gadget isn’t exactly new - we’ve seen hundreds before - but the rCube could be about to offer something genuinely new: lossless wireless streaming."

And the lossless wireless streaming is courtesy of Kleer wireless audio. Kleer is not Bluetooth, Bluetooth compresses audio, which is fine when you're talking on the phone. But when you want to listen to music, you want to hear the music the way the musician intended. With Kleer, you hear CD-quality, lossless, uncompressed, digital stereo audio.

There are several ways to enjoy the Kleer wireless sound with the Arcam rCube. It comes integrated in the rCube speaker so that you can pair the speaker with any Kleer-based wireless earbuds or headphones.

Or, you can purchase the separate rWave or rWand dongles. The rWave is USB, allowing you to connect it to your laptop, Windows or Mac. And the rWand dongle is a portable transmitter that you can connect to any compatible iPod/iPhone, allowing you to stream wireless audio from your iPod to the rCube speaker.

Another excerpt:

"Cunningly hidden along the bottom of the rear of the rCube are various ins and outs. A USB port for software upgrades, a power switch and a 3.5mm auxiliary jack to attach almost any audio device are expected. More welcome is a video port that’s capable of taking 720p video from an iPhone 4 (only) to a TV. There’s also a bass button that should be depressed if you use the rCube in the corner of a room."

Arcam also recommends you place the rCube speaker on an angle if you place it in the corner. But I figure you'll figure all that out.

Purchase the Arcam rCube on Amazon UK >>