PURE HIGHWAY 200

● Price: £79.99

WHAT IS IT?

An after-market DAB digital radio receiver for your car.

It’s made by Pure, one of the most respected names when it comes to household digital radios, and is part of a range of Highway products designed to bring DAB radio to older and more basic cars which don’t have the system built in.

The Highway 200 is the most basic model in the range, designed to simply add DAB radio, and lacks the Bluetooth streaming and handsf ree calling functions of the larger, more expensive 400 and 600 units. It offers DAB and D AB+ reception with autotune and 20 station presets, the option to output its signal via an a ux cable or FM transmission and a clear digital display. There’s also an aux input to allow you to connect a phone or music player and stream from that via the Pure unit to your car’s stereo.

WHAT’S IT LIKE?

The unit itself is a neat little box that looks good and is easy to install somewhere accessible but unobtrusive. The buttons aren’t particularly big but they’re fine for quickly changing stations, which is about all you’ll need to do once it’s set up.

Setup itself is a doddle. The most fiddly part of the operation is mounting the antenna/ aerial, which sticks to the car’s windscreen, and then routing the cable somewhere unobtrusive. Once that’s done it’s a simple matter of letting the unit search for stations. How many you’ll get will obviously depend on your local reception — expect far more in the city than out in the sticks — but the process is quick and you don’t have to do anything. Once it’s found all the available stations you’re free to programme them into preset slots or simply scroll through them at the press of a button. It’s as easy as using any car stereo.

As with any in-built system poor reception is your enemy. The small windowmounted aerial does a good job of picking up stations but it does drop out in areas with a patchy DAB signal so don’t expect miracles.

If that does happen, or if there’ s nothing good on any of the stations, you can connect any device with a headphone jack viathebuilt-in3.5mmcableand listen to your own music.

For the best sound quality you’ll want to use the Highway 200’s aux output, which offers excellent sound, but for vehicles without a 3.5mm socket there’s the option to transmit the signal over an unused FM frequency. Quality isn’t as good and the signal’s susceptible to interference from other devices and local stations but you can at least save up to 10 frequencies and hop between them as you travel.

If you’re desperate for DAB in your car the Highway 200 is a quick, easy and relatively cheap way to add it.