Pure have been in the radio business for as long as I can remember. They were on the shelves when I worked my part time retail job during college around 15 years ago and they were very popular due to their decent build quality and audio performance. And that still holds true today. We’re taking a look at the Pure Elan Connect+ and first impressions are great!
The Pure Elan Connect+ is a small, portable radio in size measuring a 24x11cm with a depth of 6cm. It’s the perfect size to fit on some kind of bedroom side table, or even in a gap you have on a busy kitchen worktop to give you some background music. On the back is an expandable aerial to pick up a better signal and a battery tray to go fully portable. The unit itself runs on USB power. There was no 3-pin plug in the box which was a shame, so make sure you have a spare one laying around if you want to mains power it. A microUSB was provided, which again is a shame as USB Type-C is becoming more and more commonplace in the home.
Setup was fairly simple. I opted to keep my Pure Elan Connect+ connected to the network here so I could connect to internet radio stations when I wanted. Other setup processes included date and time which you can choose 12 or 24 hours and also daylight savings too which I turned on.
Once on the main menu, everything is very easy to navigate thanks to the centre rotating knob and colour screen on the front of the device. The six buttons surrounding the knob read: Home, Source, being DAB, FM or Internet radio, Back, Play/pause and skip tracks on the right-hand side. At the top of the IO are three preset buttons and an information button, which gives you information on the station you are currently listening to.
The Internet radio search functionality is wicked. You can search by keyword, or choose from a popular list of radio stations currently in the world. And some are bizzare, and most are in a foreign language. But it’s certainly interesting to hear radio from other countries.
The audio is driven from two drivers either side of the unit to give you a stereo sound. The speakers aren’t particularly big, and are hidden by a plastic perforated grill.
Audio quality isn’t too bad either. It’s very much what you would expect from a radio. Bass isn’t very present, and the unit focuses more on clarity through the mids and trebles. But, it’s expected so I can’t really knock it. Of course, Internet radio sounds much better than the older FM frequencies, and DAB is still a decent experience being digital. But that WiFi connection just feels as if the Pure Elan Connect+ receives more data to be able to pump out a better quality sound. From the various Internet radio stations I tried, I found that they were either being broadcast in AAC or MP3 quality at around 44.1 kHz and a bitrate of 128.
The Pure Elan Connect+ comes in two different colours. We’ve seen the charcol grey version which is matte in finish and soft to the touch, but there’s also white available too. On the Pure website, the Elan Connect+ retails for around £89.99 at time of writing this review which is a pretty decent price I feel for the amount of choice you have to listen to here. For more information head over to the Pure website.
