Editorial Review:

Amazon.com Product Description -- Posted May 22, 2008:
Take your personalized Slacker Radio stations with you anywhere you go. Built-in Wi-Fi auto-refreshes up to 15 Slacker Radio stations with new content, and the music plays anytime--whether or not you are connected.

With the Slacker Portable, the world's first-ever personal radio player, you can now take your favorite music with you, and discover new music along the way.

Personalized Radio

With the Slacker Portable, the world's first-ever personal radio player, you can now take your favorite music with you. Choose from more than 100 expertly programmed radio stations, or custom-build your own using the vast Slacker artist network. The more you listen, the better Slacker gets at automatically delivering the music you want to hear.

Effortless
Create your own unique radio experience with Slacker Personal Radio. You know what you like--Slacker knows how to deliver it. Slacker's Internet radio offering is built on the expertise of DJs from all over the country, and just by listening, you make Slacker even smarter at delivering more music that you love.

Music Discovery
Perfect your listening experience using Slacker's exclusive personalization tools. With the buttons, tell Slacker Radio which songs are your favorites--and which ones you never want to hear again. Fine-tune any station--get more hits, or request older artists over new, for instance. Album reviews and artist bios come with every song and are delivered right to your Slacker Portable. View them on the 4-inch color LCD.

Advanced Radio Clocks
Slacker DJs operate using a proven method of picking and mixing songs to deliver excellent musical variety that complements your tastes. This patent-pending DJ technology is embedded in the Slacker Portable to create the very best radio stations. The more you listen, the better it performs to deliver new music you'll love.

Choose from more than 100 expertly programmed radio stations, or custom-build your own.

Get new music instantly from the vast Slacker music library by connecting at hundreds of thousands of Wi-Fi spots across the country.

Slacker Basic Radio: Free

Take the world's first-ever personal radio player with you for nonstop, customized music wherever you go. On the Slacker Portable, store thousands of songs for repeated listening, or connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot to get new music instantly. With hours of battery life, the Slacker Portable is built to go where you go.

To offer your favorite music for free, the Slacker Basic Radio service might play one to two ads an hour. That's significantly fewer ads than traditional radio, so you can relax and easily enjoy your favorite music.

Plus, it's all completely legal. Slacker has unique licensing agreements with thousands of record labels to give you free access to a variety of music. By working directly with the record labels, Slacker gets the latest content to ensure your radio stations always stay current.

Upgrade to Slacker Premium Radio

If you want even more out of the service, pay just $7.50 per month for Slacker Premium, which puts you in control. What's the difference between Slacker Basic and Slacker Premium? First, Premium subscribers can avoid the ads that played in the Basic service. So, it's an ad-free listening experience.

Next, Premium subscribers have access to Slacker Request Song, which lets you add your favorite artists' songs to your station. Then, use Slacker's fine-tuning controls to indicate how often those requested songs should play.

Third, Premium subscribers have no limits on the number of songs they skip, letting listeners create the exact music experience they want. (Basic listeners are limited to six skips per hour, per station.)

And fourth, as a Premium subscriber, you can save your favorite songs with the touch of a button. Saved songs are added to your library so that you can listen to them any time. You also can save your favorites to your PC using the Slacker Software Player. It's the ultimate personal radio experience.

Slacker Premium Radio at a glance:

• Just $7.50 per month
• No advertisements
• Request songs
• Unlimited skipping of songs
• Save favorites

Slacker Radio: It's Everywhere

With the Slacker Portable, get free and easy access to millions of songs from thousands of artists wherever you are. All of the music you love is automatically delivered to your Slacker Portable for free at any Wi-Fi hotspot or through your PC via USB.

Pocket DJ
The same personalized listening experience you love on Slacker.com is available wherever you go on the Slacker Portable. Slacker DJs hand pick songs for your player, and you can use the buttons on the Slacker Portable to further customize your stations. The more you listen, the better the music gets.

The Slacker Portable gives you uninterrupted access to your music wherever you are. Thousands of songs are stored on the Slacker Portable to fill up all of your personalized radio stations. That means you can listen to your stations, even if you are nowhere near a Wi-Fi connection.

Refresh On the Go
The Slacker Portable automatically can add new music at hundreds of thousands of Wi-Fi hotspots across the country. Each time you connect, songs that were hand-picked by Slacker DJs are added to your device. Plus, you can add new stations to your Slacker Portable from any PC or Mac with an Internet connection.

Built in MP3 Player

Already have your own personal music library? The Slacker Portable features a built-in MP3 player. You can store up to 500 MB of MP3s on the 2 GB/15-station Slacker Portable, 1.5 GB of MP3s on the 4 GB/25-station Slacker Portable, or 4 GB of MP3s on the 8 GB/40-station Slacker Portable. Then, listen whenever and wherever you want.

On-the-Go Playlists
Create personalized playlists with your MP3s using the intuitive controls on the Slacker Portable. Enjoy the favorites you own in any order you want. As a Slacker Premium Radio subscriber, you can mix your MP3s with saved radio tracks to fashion playlists absolutely unique to you.

Software Player
Play your own personal collection of MP3s on the your portable with Slacker Software Player. Simply plug your portable into your PC to transfer songs and refresh your radio stations. Also, such enhanced features as high-resolution, full-screen album art and a variety of visualizations track to the music on the portable's 4-inch color LCD.

What's in the Box
Slacker 2 GB Portable Radio with 15 Stations (Black), USB cable, power supply, earphones



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Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

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Rating: - * go for the G2 units ... The Slacker portables bring a new dimension to music listening. Without the hassle of ripping your own MP3s, the service allows you to create your own customized radio stations and then, by WiFi or USB, load them onto the player for your enjoyment at any time. Many reviews have discussed the player in depth, so let me address a couple of issues in regards to the older player, the G1, versus the new player, the G2. The G1 player is obviously bigger, and while one advantage is an easier to read screen, it is a bigger package to carry around. The G1 player also has not had any further firmware updates since March '08, while the G2 player has had frequent updates. Therefore, some important features such as improved battery life, and better USB connectivity have not (yet) been updated for the G1. Please check the slacker forums if you're thinking about buying a G1 to see if any updates have occurred since this was posted. The G1 player lacks an equalizer control setting, while this was incorporated into the G2 player. I can't say that the G2's equalizer is worth much, as they don't have any user adjustable settings. The G2 player has a setting to manage the WiFi settings, whereas this has not (yet) been implemented in the G1 player. This again reflects the lack of any further apparent support for this first generation player. As the price of the 8Gb G1 player has not dropped substantially (although for a time it was selling for less than [...] from Amazon), the G2 unit appears to be the primary hardware that is receiving support from the company. The G1 player has had an annoying habit of occasionally having a break in audio at the beginning of a song. This has not been a problem with the G2 units. It is unknown what creates the problem, but there has not been a fix issued for the G1 unit to address this issue. Remember, if you use the web based player at [...] ..... not all the songs that can be heard on the web player are licensed to be downloaded onto the portable players. The company says that there are they are continually gaining more licensing rights, but it is unclear what percentage of music that you hear on the webplayer can be transferred to the portable player. Even with this limitation, you can create a wide variety of stations and enjoy them on the units. However, for your money, you will probably find the G2 unit less buggy, and better supported by the company with updates. Rating: - * Good when it works... ... I had one heck of a time just getting my Slacker to work, after that the power button the device was constantly acting up. It would be very unresponsive from time to time and caused me to drop my device, inflicting cosmetic damage. I had to get it replaced. The new one was the same way. For a whole week I couldn't use the device simply because I couldn't turn it on. The screen would light up when I plugged it in but that was it. When the device does work it works well. The service is amazing, if you aren't familiar with it go sign up, and the portability just makes it that much better. The device is rather bulky and very lightweight. From its appearance you would think it'd be heavy and high quality, but not so much. It doesn't take much to do light damage. It's a little tricky getting used to the scroll wheel, but get used to it because the touch strip isn't a very good way of controlling the device. For the money, considering the reliability and build it's very expensive. I wouldn't call the price justified. I hope the G2 (second generation at slacker.com) is of better quality. Rating: - * Nice, but ready for prime time? ... Great machine, but has some limitations. The screen is great, the concept is great. Reliability is tolerable. Great for someone who can't afford a LOT of cd's. You DO have to really get the monthly subscription if you want to make it worthwhile. You can really customize your "personal channels". I liked it, but returned it. 1) NO real classical music. 2) Very limited comedy stand up. 3) Decent in other genres. It's selection of music is iffy, if you let it choose too much, or expect it to be 100% accurate for music titles in genre, forget it. It's artist listing for some genres is not accurate. They list some cd's by performer, not "artist". This is miserable for classics. The device is well laid out, with LIGHTED buttons on the side. Sound is good. Volume is good. Sometimes the sound is a bit bright, but not too much so. You don't have to choose 15 stations. You can use fewer, and the device is supposed to know that and make more room for the channels you do have. The 2gb one has 500mb for your own mp3s. You can also select a song as a "favorite", and it will transfer it to the 500mb area to keep it on machine. There are some good settings you can do on the PC software to control the music a bit. It's not exactly perfect right now, but if they corrected a lot of the irritants, it would be a great device. Rating: - * Fastest Delivery ... It only took 2 days to get my Slacker, BUT when I tried to refresh it, nothing. It worked good till I did that. I talked with a Slacker Tech via email. I tried everything he suggested and more and it still wouldn't work. I shipped it back to Slacker, ( I had to pay posted and insurance on it). That was almost 3 weeks ago and still no sign of a new one!:( Rating: - * slacker falls short ... to start off i'm a huge fan of slacker radio i love the software and everything. the device is just full of bugs. Its almost impossible to update my playlists with my comp. its slow and unresponsive. the touch strip on the side is cool but starts to get in the way if you have large hands. i would give the device a higher rating because like i said the software radio is great but the device falls short on just a few fronts.