Labs

Philips' Streamium WAC3500D is the only streaming audio receiver here with an internal hard disk. As well as connecting to your wired or wireless network, it can rip and encode CDs to MP3 format, read files from a USB drive and play music from a docked iPod. Its speakers produced rich, powerful bass tones, but the mid-range was murky.

Its menu system was slow

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and unresponsive, and froze frequently, requiring us to switch off and restart the device. The manual is difficult to read, but Philips' Media Manager software was easy to install and use. You're given the option to update the firmware to enable internet radio after you've registered the Streamium online. Once you've installed the update and set up an account on Philips' website, you can listen to internet radio from the BlueBeat, Live365 and RadioIO services, and add your own selection of stations.

The hard disk's 80GB capacity provides plenty of room for high-quality MP3 files, and we could encode MP3s straight to the disk. It was simple to copy encoded files to a USB drive or over the network to our PC.

The Streamium has some great features, but is awkward to use due to its tiny screen and unstable interface. If all you want is a media receiver buy the Squeezebox, and if you need speakers Roberts' WM201 has better sound quality.