It’s been seven years since our What Hi-Fi? Awards radio category featured as many as three winners, and yet just when you think there can’t be many more days left in the humble desktop radio, here we are. Indeed, rather than settle on only a pair of radios for this year’s Best Buy winners, our in-house reviews team was so impressed with the recent newcomers that had arrived in the test rooms that we had no choice but to decorate a trio of them.
Only one returns from last year, the Ruark Audio R2 MK4 (below). And if your idea of a radio is a dated bedside box with a pull-up AM/FM antennae, this modern masterpiece will alter that slightly... or rather, a lot. Taking its second consecutive gong as our premium radio pick (‘Best radio over £400’), the handsome R2 MK4 is one of the British radio specialist’s larger and more fruitfully featured models – not only a pretty face and FM/DAB+ facilitator but also a gateway to music streaming via its Bluetooth, Spotify Connect, Amazon Music and Deezer support.
