Pure Highway - In-car digital radio adapter
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Pure Highway - In-car digital radio adapter.
UK price: £69.89.
Pros: Neat unit, works really well.
Cons: Wires dangling across your dashboard.
Verdict: Brilliant but temporary solution till car-makers start fitting on-board DAB.
Rating: 
Available from: www.nevadaradio.co.uk
Product Review
DAB converts have been frustrated by the difficulty in listening to this revolutionary new radio system while travelling.
Things are getting better - the Pure Move I recently reviewed on this site is the best portable digital set I've seen yet. But what about listening in the car, where many of us are most dependent on radio?
Car manufacturers have been uncharacteristically sluggish to offer digital radio in new models. So this car adapter from DAB pioneers Pure is the most obvious solution. But is it any good?
First some basics: The Highway isn't quite what you think. It's not a normal digital radio for your car. It's a receiver that gets DAB signals through its own little aerial, then transmits them to your existing car radio.
So it's all a bit cranky and DIY, takes a while to set up and leaves wires trailing across your dashboard. But it all works impressively well.
The Highway gives you all the benefits of digital radio while you're driving along: the increased station choice and un-interrupted top-notch sound quality.
The Highway comes with a small internal aerial that you stick like tape on the inside of your windscreen, right over in the corner tucked away out of sight. Then there's a lead that connects to the main unit, which is the size of a small sat-nav box.
This can be mounted at the foot of the windscreen on a flexible magnetic mount, again, like many sat-nav units. The aerial lead can be tucked along the base of the windscreen, taped secure or if you're ambitious you could bury it behind or underneath the dashboard. Self-adhesive clips are provided to tidy this cable.
But there's another lead connecting to the cigarette lighter socket for power and there's not much you can do except let it dangle there. But at least there's no wire to connect to the existing radio set, it sends its signal by FM. That seems to work okay. There are contingencies if the FM gets interference, basically there are some more buttons to press. So far I haven't had any problems.
And it's useful having a pause button for live DAB radio and the facility to scan back in ten second chunks to catch traffic reports or news and sports bulletins you missed. Yet another good thing is the line-in socket that allows you to connect any mp3 player to the car stereo - if you buy a connecting cable.
You can buy another fitting kit to switch the same receiver unit into another car for £24.95.
And when you finish your drive you can take the DAB with you and use it as a hand-held digital radio, listening through headphones - as long as you've bought and installed a couple of AA batteries… or I suppose you could carry the car battery around with you instead.
POSTSCRIPT
Okay, I'm adding this after three months using the Pure Highway in my car. I'm less enthusiastic about the system than I was. The trailing wire from the cig-lighter becomes a pain and on mine at least has to be disconnected and re-connected every time you turn the engine off or it eventually drains the battery. Then there's the signal - any overhead cable or pylon seems to cause interference and often the reception on digital stations isn't that good. So you end up with a crackly signal, just like a poor quality FM station which kind of defeats the object of the DAB unit. I still use it and enjoy BBC 6 Music, Planet Rock and Absolute Radio on the move but if I was listening to BBC Radio 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 I would just stick with the normal car radio. So my initial 4 star rating needs to be tempered by this experience... let's knock it back to three stars. DAB on the move is still, sadly, a work in progress.
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