» Pioneer Inno Portable XM2go Radio with MP3 Player

Pioneer Inno Portable XM2go Radio with MP3 Player Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Five Stars for the Radio, One for the Battery
Comment: I have been an XM fan for years (my original boom box still gets a daily workout). The Inno itself is superb but battery life is just awful. I have tried new batteries but keep getting the same results: play time is only a couple of hours. Also, when I recharge the battery all night and take the Inno into work so that I may listen to it at lunch, the battery is dead when I turn it on! In order to maintain the previous night's charge, I must remove the battery from the radio and reinstall it when I want to listen to it! Please, whoever is going to be in charge once the merger takes place (XM or Sirius), correct this!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Awesome!
Comment: Great item and purchase. Would be nice with a little more memory - we have ours split in 1/2, half for mp3s and half for recording off xm. We use this in our baby's room for the kid tunes and classical music - she absolutely loves this! We hook it up to external speakers and it sounds great. We have also used on the beach, when biking, etc. and never had any issues.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: XM Inno vs. Sirius Stiletto - Inno wins hands down
Comment: I rarely write reviews, but I don't think I've seen anyone comparing the XM Inno to the Sirius Stiletto, so I thought that I would do so, since I own both. I received the Stiletto as a Christmas gift, and was so disgusted with it two months later that I got the XM to replace it. I couldn't be happier with that decision, as the Inno beats the Stiletto hands down.

- Size - Advantage Inno - The Inno is similar to a closed Motorola Razr phone, while the Stiletto is more like a Blackberry Pearl, only thicker (particularly with the "long-life" battery in).

- Screen and Controls - Advantage Stiletto - There is no denying that the Stiletto is a "slicker" device than the Inno, despite the bigger size. The Stiletto display is much more brilliant and sharp than the "pixelly" Inno display. The controls are a bit easier and more intuitive, and the Stiletto appears to have a few more short-cuts. The Inno gets the job done fine, but without as much of a "wow" factor.

- Reception - Advantage Inno by a mile - I live in an apartment building with a south-facing window just outside of Boston, MA - the Inno works nearly flawlessly in my apartment, whether using the internal antenna or docked in the home dock (which is INCLUDED, unlike the Stiletto). I run the XM antenna to the window, but I don't really need to, it gets great reception wherever I place the antenna. It works great at my office as well, a high-rise building in downtown Boston. Live reception is also quite good while walking around the city (I rarely drive, so I can't comment on that). It even works in my gym, which is in the basement of a building in an urban setting with no outside windows at all. The Stiletto, on the other hand, has sporadic reception even while it is in the home dock with the antenna at the window. And as for live reception on the go, forget about it.

Some people make a big deal out of the Stiletto's built-in Wi-Fi feature, and I did use it occasionally because the reception was so bad. But the Inno's reception is so good as is, I wouldn't need it on the Inno anyway.

I should note that with both services I'm accessing the terrestrial repeater, not the satellite. The satellite access on both is basically non-existent where I live. In general, if you purchase either devise expecting to get constant reception while you're driving around or going for a jog, I think you will be disappointed. I didn't have that expectation going in, so I don't have that complaint.

- Recording Function - Advantage Stiletto (if it actually worked - see below) - The primary reason I was interested in a portable satellite radio was as a recording device. I never really think about the live reception while I'm on the go, because I'm always listening to what I've recorded. I record a few hours of music onto the device every night while I sleep, then wake up with new music to listen to every morning. So much better than my iPod! I'm not limited to my current CD collection or what I buy on iTunes, not to mention the effort that it takes to transfer a whole collection of CDs to the iPod. You get a month of UNLIMITED music in any style or genre you can think of, all for the price of ONE new album? It's not very difficult for me to do that math.

The Stiletto does have more memory than the Inno (100 hours of recorded content vs. 50 hours), but that hasn't made any difference to me so far. The whole point of me owning the device is that I'm refreshing the music every night, so it would certainly be quite a feat for me to listen to more than 50 hours in a given day.

The Stiletto also does have more recording "flexibility." You can set the Stiletto to record at a certain time every week, every day, every weekday, every weekend, or one time only. The only options for the Inno are one time only or every day. This is one of the primary reasons I first chose the Stiletto over the Inno, but due to the reliability issues described below, it is a completely meaningless advantage.

- Reliability - Advantage Inno by a mile - At the end of the day, reliability and content are what drove me away from the Stiletto. Over the course of two months, the Stiletto was a horrible mess of buggy software and unpredictability. "Scheduled" recordings would consistently fail to take place for unknown reasons, or they would be cut off in the middle. Recordings that I scheduled for a certain time would mysteriously shift to another time. It sounds great that the Stiletto can be set to record a certain program at a certain time every week, but if it doesn't actually RECORD when it's supposed to, it doesn't do much good! What's more, the device constantly freezes or crashes entirely. And the batteries have a tendency to get very, very hot (as in almost too hot to touch). The Inno, meanwhile, has been nothing but reliable. Recordings take place as scheduled, no crashes, no freezing, no bugs.

- Content - Advantage XM by a mile - I can only speak for the stations I listen to consistently (indie rock, rap and hip-hop, electronic and dance, jam bands, and the occasional acoustic rock) but for those stations, XM service is far, far superior. The channel line-ups for XM and Sirius may sound very similar, but what you won't know until you start listening consistently is how shockingly repetitive and unimaginative Sirius programming is. For example, if you listen to an hour of the old school rap station on Sirius ("Backspin") on a Monday night, I can pretty much guarantee that you'll hear some Ice Cube, Public Enemy, Run DMC and LL Cool J. If you listen the next night, you'll hear Ice Cube, Public Enemy, Run DMC and LL Cool J. The night after that, you'll hear Ice Cube, Public Enemy, Run DMC...well, you get the idea. And most of the time, you'll even be hearing the same SONGS, not just the same artists. Just before I switched over to XM, I listened to an hour of Backspin one night and EVERY SINGLE song that came on was one that I had heard already in the two months that I had owned the Stiletto (and it's not like I'm sitting around listening to Backspin 24 hours a day). What a joke! If you genuinely prefer to stay in your "comfort zone" and listen only to the artists and songs that you know already, then Sirius certainly fits the bill. As for me, the whole point of using satellite radio is being able to easily and relatively cheaply expand my music listening beyond what's already on my iPod. XM serves that purpose much better than Sirius does.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Love my Inno
Comment: I have had the Inno since its release date and it's still in use. The early units had some problems (mainly battery life) that were corrected through firmware updates available online. Portable reception is great in most cities (XM has signal repeaters)but hit or miss otherwise, more dependent on aiming the unit or using the antenna headphones.

Pros: Live coverage and 50 hours of recorded content for places where there is no reception (airplanes). Scheduled recording automates recording repeated shows. You can hit record in the middle of a song and it will record the whole song for you. XM content is great.

Cons: Recorded content cannot be backed-up or transferred to another device. Have to use XM + Napster to organize recorded content from a PC.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: BUY NOW TO BE REPLACED IN 2008
Comment: At Christmas 2007 Best Buy was selling at $119 - an outstanding purchase price! I was told Pioneer was about to release a new model which will allow one to download books. Unfortunately, after 2 weeks of use the screen failed. I returned it to Best Buy and received an even exchange for a replacement. Besides the pre-mature screen failure, the only reason I did not give it 5 STARS is I am disappointed in the inconsistent signal when I use it outdoors. A slight change in direction while walking may cause loss of signal. I pre-record XM music or use my downloaded music when outside. Inside home use is excellent. It is a neat little gadget for a hundred bucks. But remember you will have to buy the XM service. Best Buy was giving 3 months free and if you purchased a year of service you received a free month, in total 4 free months for the first year. By year two I assume you will be hooked on XM Radio or it will be another dumb idea purchase.

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