Como Audio Amico Portable Music System - Weather resistant with Teak

I've left a 4 star review because to leave 3 star would give an unfair and wrong impression. However I don't think it really deserves the full 4 star...in percentages I'd say more like 65%.I'm trying to make this a useful review for other purchasers and for Como so I should also say to start with that on balance I don't regret buying this and probably would again although the full price is really pushing its worth currently in my view. So I hope these constructive criticisms can result in upgrades over time.I should also say that the customer service is very good and helpful. I've emailed several questions and have had useful replies generally within 24 hours. So my comments are:1. Sound quality. Two key factors to me in buying this were sound quality and portability. For a small unit, the sound is excellent and I'm happy that bass, treble etc can all be tuned to taste. The wooden case gives a solidness and depth to the sound that I suspect would be difficult to replicate in a lighter weight unit. I'd give sound quality 5 star.2. Portability. This too is excellent. The inbuilt battery and charging works seamlessly with mains operation and the quoted 8 hours seems more than sufficient. I'd give portability 5 star too.3. Range of music sources. This is comprehensive and in principle covers everything I would want although not all sources work without gremlins.4. User interface. This is my main criticism. I'm afraid it's clunky and to me, rather old fashioned. There are lists of menu items that cascade from each other and although in the end I have sort of worked it out, I don't think its particularly intuitive and in a product of this price, should in my opinion be far better. It reminds me of the old days of Windows 78 or 82 where everything was a bit of a struggle but worked in the end if you were prepared to put in the time!It starts with turning on...the unit isn't instantly live, I guess it needs to connect to its various feeds, but that's a bit irritating. And in changing from one input to another, it's easy to finish up in the wrong place! It's all solvable of course but in these days of instantly operating and very intuitive interfaces on smartphones, iPads etc, this really lags behind.This theme follows with some sources eg the USB input. In theory put your music on a USB stick, plug it in and off you go. But that isn't what happens. It is supposed to support 128GB sticks but it took me a lot of time and experimentation to get to a point where the unit was capable of reading anything larger than 32GB...which may be fine for mpeg but really isn't for wav files. The only 128GB USB I could get to work was a Samsung Evo micro SD card from an old phone. In an adapter, thats fine but regardless of cost and speed of other flash sticks it was a real issue despite being very careful about formatting etc.Even then, accessing the USB is a bit like using a computer. It tells you there's no USB so you retry and it suddenly appears. Imagine then that there are 100 albums...well you've got to twiddle a little knob to scroll through them all...without accidentally pressing the knob! Then you need another knob to get to the menu for repeat and shuffle. Then, although files in an album can be shuffled in play by the unit, it can't shuffle the albums...which I think lets it down. My old iPod Classic from 10 or 15 years ago does better than that. So I tried to make up a flash stick with all the tracks in one album and then it said there were too many files to shuffle...grrrr!.Reception on some other inputs is also a bit disappointing. I live in an area of limited FM signal reception in the UK so wasn't too surprised to find the unit not picking up stations. But other radios do work better on digital than this one. Como have reaffirmed that the unit is checked for UK operation but all I can say is that it doesn't work here very well! And wifi reception isn't that hot too...only 4 or 5m away from my hub (the current best BT fibre broadband superhub) and the signal on the meter is dropping off noticeably. Today for some reason (not for the first time), with the unit only 1m away from the hub, the internet radio stopped twice for no reason...as far as I know there was no signal interruption or wifi problem here.I've had to do one factory reset and a couple of reboots so far to resolve occasional freezing, but the last time was 2 weeks ago so maybe/hopefully that won't reoccur.5. Price. You can't ignore the price. I have a high end very expensive hifi system so I am prepared to pay for quality...which is why I bought this. When I was researching this unit, the only other one that seemed to fit the bill here was the top of the line Roberts unit. That looks more like a radio and doesn't have the physical mass of the Como, it also has an unbelievably amateur battery system. But the Como is about twice the price and the clunkiness of the operation makes that difficult to justify.6. CONCLUSION. As I said at the start, I don't think I regret buying the Como, I just want it to be better. In writing down what I hope are helpful albeit criticisms, I've found myself getting more and more frustrated that these niggles persist. I would honestly like to report that I'm totally delighted with the unit but I can't and find that both disappointing and frustrating. Excellent sound quality, portability, design aesthetics and customer service are let down by the only other things that you have to touch to make it all work, the interface.I don't know if Como will see this review but if they do and if they can take the comments in the constructive way they are meant, then I hope they will produce some firmware/software upgrades to sort the item out and give it the quality overall that it deserves.

Thanks for a fast delivery and the radio being a great product

Super Klang. Sehr guter Radio Empfang. Einfach zu bedienen, meist am Radio selbst oder über die App. Streaming klappt auch sehr gut. Bin begeistert.