Teenage Engineering OB-4

A radio that’s gaga

Is that Wall-e’s permanently shocked cousin?

Although this extremely clever (and slightly mysterious) radio can do a lot of things, it can’t fly around space falling in love with other radios. Instead, this sharp-suited wireless records the previous two hours of whatever station you’re listening to, so you can rewind anything you’ve missed and replay, loop or time-warp the frequency modulation out of it.

Why is it so… naked?!

It’s true, the chaps at Teenage Engineering love to simplify things, but you can’t deny that the end result here is nothing short of pornographic. What’s more, that sleek, slab-sided front houses two four-inch bass drivers and a pair of neodymium tweeters for crystal-clear sound. It pumps out around 100db of tuneage via a line input, Bluetooth, FM radio or the beguiling ‘disk’ source.

Oooh, what does that do?

Well, Teenage plans to add a bunch of features here over time. But for now, it packs three special modes: Ambient, which creates a blissed-out drone track fashioned from snippets of a radio broadcast; Metronome, which is, well, a metronome, recorded in hi-def stereo; and Karma, a ‘30-in-1 musical mantra box’ that works as an audible spiritual guide. Hmm… we might skip that one.

Is that a handle on the top? Like an old-school boombox?

Yes, the OB-4 can be obnoxiously pumped in public, and its batteries will run for an average of 40 hours before they need topping up. But that’s not the best bit – because the user interface features a gloriously motorised volume knob and continuously rotating ‘tape reel’. Grab it, spin it and mess around with sounds like some kind of radio-based Cassetteboy.