- The Grace Digital Mondo GDI-IRC6000 streams over 17,000 radio stations and on demand contact included Pandora, SiriusXM, iHeartRadio, Live365, NPR, NOAA weather and Weatherbug
- Play music directly from the Internet without a PC or play your favorite computer files from your computer. Supports: AAC, AAC+, ADTS, AIFC, AIFF, CAF, MP3, NeXT, OGG , WAV, WMA,ASX, M3U, PLS,HTTP, HTTPS, RTSP, Apple Lossless, and FLAC 24-bit 96kHz files
- Play your digital music and enjoy crisp highs and deep base via the 3 inch woofer and 1 inch tweeter via the class D digital amplifier. Even wake to your favorite music via 7 separate alarms with built in adjustable sleep timer and large snooze bar
- Connectivity includes built in 802.11n Wi-Fi, Headphone, RCA line out, Aux-in, USB (to play flash drive music or optional Grace Digital Ethernet Adapter) with built in Battery Backup and Real-Time clock ( RTC)
- Included accessories: Power Adapter, Remote Control, RCA to 3.5mm connector, user's guide. Download your free iPhone or android remote control app
- Optional Rechargeable Li-ion battery pack sold separately
Opening the box I liked that the unit it small. It has a big plug, I tried it in the kitchen but the plug is so big I was not able to plug back in an air freshener to the top plug because the Mondo took so much room in the outlet.
Once plugged in, I found my wireless network and entering the password I had to laugh. Get ready to spin the dial in front up and down and all around. Once connected, it asked if I wanted a firmware upgrade, which of course I did.
I went and logged into my Sirius account, again be prepared to be patient and sit there spinning the dial all over the place. One typo is hard to fix. I went into the settings and changed the clock, it will display it in 12 format or 24. I also wanted to register the device; you just go to the website and enter in the code that is provided on the screen on the Mondo. Once registered, it will display a screen with many options such as "Get more stuff". I am glad I clicked it because you can link your accounts through your computer and you do not have to sit there and spin the dial like crazy. This was a nice feature. I added Pandora through this feature and it linked it right away. I love that Pandora is integrated on the device and also on the remote. Quick thumbs up or fast forward right there without trying to find it, great feature! The next option on the website is to "Manage My Stuff". This is where you can manage your station, your streams, and your podcasts. The last is "Manage My Radios". It will display the unit you have registered and if you have more than one you would select it here.
I like that the unit comes with a remote. The remote is rather bulky though. I am used to iHome devices that have really small remotes and the size of a lighter and really thin. This is about half the size of a TV remote and thick. It works OK but I found using the buttons on the device a lot easier to navigate around than the remote. It does come with batteries which is a plus. It also comes with audio cables if you want to hook it up to your home stereo system. Since I have all the channels I want streaming from my Rokus, that is not a feature I will use but it is nice to have. It also has an AUX jack if you want to plug in a MP3 device. Plus a USB input as well.
One great thing, if you add a channel through the website, it lets you know the kbps that it is broadcasted in. I think that is important, you want to make sure you are getting a high stream. I will admit I could not get a lot of the stations to play even when associating them to the correct program. Several did not work, but when they did, it was nice to sample it on my laptop and add the channel to my list and know it will be in my station list on the unit.
From the main unit it has my weather built in; it shows the weather for several days with one click, or dial! It has my local fm stations which you are able to record through the DAR.fm, which is a free service. It has a built in equalizer or presets to choose from. I can't think of one feature it does not have!
Right now my favorite device in my home is either my iPod touch that I kept docked on my iHome or streaming my Pandora through an Acer tablet through a Bluetooth speaker. However, this device has everything my other favorite units have, and it is all built in! The sound is wonderful! I have kept it in the kitchen and usually stream a new age station on Pandora while cleaning or if cooking/cleaning I turn it to Sirius and listen to Hair Nation, I am a metalhead at heart. Very impressed with this unit, I have never owned a Grace unit but they have proved they are up there with the other competitors.
Updated on January 30, 2012: I use this product every day I am in my kitchen. I had to forgo my air freshener since it takes my whole outlet but the trade off was worth it! Every time I am in the kitchen I am listening to the channels. I did want to add that if you add Sirius, you must have a main subscription then you add the internet radio part to your account, it cost $3.50 a month. With that you are able to get regular channels internet radio only, which to me is great. I tried to see what live365 was about but did not like their channels and found their prices to be extremely high if you want commercial free. I believe it was $71.40 billed every 12 months for the cheapest per month subscription. I am a hard core Pandora fan and user and pay $36 I believe a year to have commercial free, more skips, and higher streaming quality. The Mondo is Pandora friendly so it really suits my needs. I did try out iheartradio which is another application and I like it so far. It is like Pandora, just not as sophisticated, it is also free.
Updated March 26, 2012: I still am in love with this radio as much if not more than the day I got it. I have it in the kitchen and did a firmware upgrade on my router and noticed after I could not get connected to the Mondo. It kept saying enter saved key and kept me in a loop. It also would say connecting and not buffer. It was easy to understand it was my router, and not the radio. I went back to the older firmware and it still was not working. One of my friends asked if it the signal was possibly being blocked to the radio. Living in a small home I discounted that. The radio does let you see your wifi signal strength and mine was reading 5%. I then unplugged it and brought it into another room and it read 100% percent signal and immediately connected and buffered. I then moved it back to the kitchen and noticed the wall it was next to has a lot of metal in it. Once I pull the radio away from the wall the signal goes straight up and I stay connected now. Basically if you have problems connecting, trying plugging it into another room, see if that works. Something might be interfering with the signal. I also wanted to add I never use the remote that came with it. However, I did download from the Apple app store an application called, "grace digitalremote control". I kept searching for grace radio, so be sure you look up grace digital. Once you load the app it finds your radio on the wifi network. It then loads the song that is playing in Pandora and has the Pandora interface. I LOVE it. I will take a picture of it and upload it to the gallery to show you the difference. It has a color image of what is playing and the thumbs up, down, volume control, skip, etc. I love it because I keep my iPod touch with me and it is easier than the remote.
Update March 28, 2012: Since I like this radio so much I want to have the flexibility to take it from room to room. I sometimes stay in the kitchen if a good song is on, I want to be able to unplug the unit and carry it with me. Plus, I am moving into a much bigger house with a lot more room and land, meaning a large deck. I wanted to get the rechargeable battery and noticed it was almost 35 on Amazon. I then noticed it was almost 40 on Grace Digital. I looked online for coupons but found none. I ended up calling and spoke to Megan at Grace who was very polite. She said she would give me 20% of which the battery was about 32 and free ground shipping. Once I get the battery, I will review and link it from here.
Update March 28, 2013: I can't believe it has been a year since I updated this. My mondo is still used daily in my home and looks like new! I have moved it into a bathroom so my daughter can get ready with it and I can use it when on that side of the house. I bought the battery back from Grace so I am able to unplug the radio and take it into any room with me. I love the bigger clock display. If I could change one thing about it, it would be while the music is playing that the time in the lower left was a bigger. I have to be right in front of it to see the time, it is small. But otherwise I use it primary for Pandora and just LOVE it!
Buy Grace Digital GDI-IRC6000w Wi-Fi Music Player with 3.5-Inch Color Display (White) Now
At 68 years of age, I have been a radio nut, owning innumerable radios since I was 10 years old (including many amateur and shortwave radios employed during more than 50 years as a "ham" operator). I have never enjoyed a radio quite as much as the Grace Mondo.I have owned other internet radios, including a Sanyo R227 and have used iPod Touch and smartphones to listen to internet radio. I once used Sirius XM in the house for a couple of years (still use it in the car). I've had countless FM radios, shortwave radios, high-sensitivity AM radios, and even many scanner radios. But none could provide the width and depth of information and entertainment that this unit does -and as easily as it does it.
Basically, the Mondo will pick up just about anything in the world, including every single AM and FM station anywhere near me (and it knows what those are from your IP address). It can tune in thousands upon thousands of podcasts. It can easily find and provide any kind of music you want, including many channels without advertising.
I am an OTR (old time radio) fan -not the music, but the drama, comedy, western, sci-fi, mystery, and other shows from the 30s through the 50s. Scores of internet broadcasters provide non-stop OTR around the clock, and using Grace's relationship with Reciva, I can quickly find and save many old-time broadcasters to listen to on the Mondo. (I was introduced to Reciva with the Sanyo, and it has a user-friendly, efficient, uncluttered website that lets you search for and sample tens of thousands of stations with your home computer, and then program them into your Mondo.)
Aside from internet channels, there's Pandora, the free music (and comedy) system that works very well on the Mondo, enabling you to create customized channels in almost infinite variety.
"Little things" I like:
* The bright, colorful screen (not boring like monochrome, text-only screens -which are so 20th Century and difficult to read)
* Earphone jack on side toward front; if you use radio bedside, as I do, and listen to radio at night with an earphone, you want it to be easy to connect and disconnect earphones; radios with plugs in the rear are just awful for this.
* The ability to use a battery (though the required optional battery, in my opinion, is overpriced). It's very cool to be able to easily move the radio and enjoy its sounds anywhere within range of your wi-fi. There is a built-in finger handle to make carrying easy.
* Size: Not too big, not too small. Just right.
* Controls: work smoothly, solidly and do not feel cheesy.
* Volume control: It's a knob atop the set, an odd location, but at least it is a knob instead of those annoying, hard-to-use buttons found on many sets, including the Sanyo.
* Pandora: This radio works very well with Pandora, and even has the ability to thumbs up/down selections (though sometimes I get a message that the thumbing service is not available -don't know why).
* NOAA: Many of the VHF weather channels have been preprogrammed into this unit so you can listen to NOAA weather broadcasts all over the country (and Canadian versions, too). Unfortunately, a few are miscalibrated. When I try to listen to the Connecticut NOAA station that's listed, it returns a Minnesota station.
* Remote: Unit comes with a remote, which you might think is unneeded, but which I use a lot, especially for the fact that it has all 10 memory keys; the radio itself has only five plus a shift key to get you 6 to 10. Some people complain it's too big; I like the size. The little ones, like the Sanyo remote, are easy to lose.
* Input and output jacks, if you want to increase its sound quality or usefulness.
* Setup: It was really quick and easy.
Things that could be better:
* Sound: It's good, clear and crisp -and, of course, digital -but I wish it were a bit richer. The sound is adjustable, by the way, with a modest equalizer.
* Buttons, such as memories, should be backlighted. This is a great bedside radio -but that means it may be used a lot in the dark. (I find myself using the remote in the dark because the keys are light-colored, and the screen gives off enough light so I can see the keys!)
* Screen fonts: could be bigger for my geezer eyes. On many channels, including Pandora, you are told what is playing, but if your eyes ain't great, you have to get up close.The Grace Digital GDI-IRC6000 Wi-Fi Music Player with 3.5-Inch Color Display (Black) (Mondo) is the latest digital audio product from Grace. The setup was a breeze, and I connected with my Wi-Fi router within 2 minutes, and was up and listening to Internet radio in literally 5 minutes. The voice and music quality are excellent. The color LCD display is a joy to navigate through.
I only have two small nits about the Mondo:
1. Be careful when you use the built-in handle to move the Mondo around, it could slip from your grasp easily.
2. The supplied remote control works, but the Mondo at times responded sluggishly to my commands on the remote.
There, I just laid out all my complaints about the Mondo.
People, buy this radio if you can. You will be glad you did.
Want Grace Digital GDI-IRC6000w Wi-Fi Music Player with 3.5-Inch Color Display (White) Discount?
After knocking my beloved Logitech Squeezebox off my nightstand, I was in the market for a new radio. I decided to give the Grace Mondo a shot, and it was well worth it. From a distance, it looks very similar to the Squeezebox. Even up close the radios looks very alike. The finish on both radios is an identical gloss black. Layout of the controls is different, with each radio having its advantages. The biggest difference is that the Grace Mondo has a 40% larger, easier to read screen. It really makes the Squezzebox 2.4" screen look tiny. Performance wise the Mondo works flawlessly on my network. The biggest thing I miss from my Squeezebox is the lack of "Slacker". The Mondo comes with a remote, which was an option on the Squeezebox. If you're in the market for a Wi-Fi radio, The Grace Mondo is an excellent choice.Save 19% Off
Grace Digital's Wi-Fi Music Player A.K.A Mondo (Black) is a very good Internet Radio player there is no doubt about it. We now have a very serious contender for the Logitech Squeezebox . Competition is always good. It will make ways for better products in the future and I strongly believe on this that "Internet Radio" is the future of radio technology.Well, I have seen AM Radios Long Wave, Medium Wave, Short Wave Radios in my past, Then came "FM radio" and I was blown away by the "Stereo" sound and still is a very good medium to listen to even though the broadcasting range is severely limited. Satellite Radio is there but comes with a steep price in terms of monthly fees and the hardware to run it is generally more expensive also.
Internet Radio which was already there in the PC is now being made available in a portable easy to use interface without the need for a PC to stream music from radio stations.
The beauty of Internet Radio technology is that you are not limited to a specific location in order to receive the broadcasts around the world, now you are not limited to local stations on your AM dial or FM dial nor you need a long antenna to get Stereo sound. Internet radios like Grace Digital's Mondo makes listening to radio stations around the world super easy!
PROS
[+] Sound quality is very good Love it!
[+] Rich Glossy Black design Looks beautiful!
[+] Remote and all accessories included
CONS
[-] Remote feels very cheap.
While it is a serious contender for logitech's Squeezebox there are some annoying bugs which can be easily fixed
by firmware update. Please read the comments section to see the observations in detail and feel free to comment on them.
As it stands now, if you were to choose between Logitech Squeezebox Radio Music Player with Color Screen (Black) and Grace Digital Wi-Fi Music Player with 3.5-Inch Color Display (GDI-IRC6000) (Black) I would still consider Logitech Squeezebox for the feature rich offerings and excellent display even though it does not include remote.
If good quality sound (Ability to stream at high bit rates) and ease of having a Snooze button is a priority for you then Mondo is a very good choice!
Bottom-line: It is a 3 star product! It is a very good Internet Radio player No doubt about it.
If the price falls below 120 dollars it is a "steal" and will have serious competition with Logitech's Squeezebox.
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