Terratec’s Noxon iRadio for iPod – which has just dropped into the PC Pro office for review – is a veritable Swiss Army Knife of digital audio. In addition to the standard internet radio functions, it boasts an FM tuner, iPod dock and can stream music from other PCs in the house. If it could make a decent cup of tea, too, it would make the perfect replacement for our news reporter.

Within five minutes of taking the bread-loaf sized device out of the box, we had it connected to our Wi-Fi network, thanks to a commendably simple set-up wizard, although entering our router’s WPA key with the Noxon’s quirky remote control was akin to trying to spell egalitarianism. Backwards.

The Noxon handily places a folder of “local UK radio stations” at the top of the menu, to help you get started. Unfortunately, it was completely devoid of stations, leading us to spend a futile 15 minutes wondering if the radio was actually connecting to our wireless router. A brief blast of Love FM from San Marino (where, incidentally, Mick Hucknall is still very big) confirmed the connection was live, and indeed we eventually managed to locate stations closer to home by digging through the country-by-country menus. Noxon’s UK shortcut is, therefore, something of a cul-de-sac.

Although we’ve only briefly trialled a few radio stations, podcasts and a brief spot of catch-up Radio 2 with Jonathan Ross, the sound quality from the built-in speaker is perfectly capable of filling a room, although it was so base-heavy out of the box that Ross sounded more like Barry White. A tweak with the equaliser restored him to his normal lisp-heavy glory.

Overall, a mildly impressive start, but is there really enough in this black box of tricks to justify the £240 price tag? Keep an eye out for our full review next week.