Pure Highway 600 In-Car DAB+/DAB Digital Radio FM Adapter with Spotify Control and Bluetooth for Music Playback – DAB Car Radio Adapter/Transmitter and Bluetooth FM Transmitter, Black

Product Information

But t his small box has a number of tiny control buttons which are fiddly to use and distracting if driving. We would like to inform you that due to an update regarding one of the platforms hosting our internet radio service, there are some disruptions in service to be expected for products running on this platform. It’s a shame the wire is only 50cm long, though, because it limited the number of potential mounting points. Moving it further way (the sticky pad on the back of the receiver was reusable, but the aerial had to be discarded – luckily there was a spare in the box) improved reception on my A14 commute, but didn’t clear up the silence elsewhere. The unit struggled to find even the BBC’s national stations, and couldn’t hold them when we were in areas of low reception.

This has to be routed round the windscreen pillar and dashboard and requires the car ignition to be fully on to operate. If I had to mention negative points about it, I'd have to say that although it's not bad, it's not quite as sensitive as my old system. Once all wired up, you simply switch on the car, fire up your existing radio, select aux-in as the source, switch on the Pure Highway controller, follow the start-up prompts and choose your radio station from the display. One alternative way to get DAB radio in your car is to use a pocket DAB radio and either listen with headphones or connect it to your car stereo via an aux cable.But if you’d prefer to maintain the OEM look or – like me – you already have a fancy (ish) aftermarket unit and don’t really want to replace it, the answer could be an add-on adaptor. Note: If you don’t have a laptop, you will need to remove Highway’s antenna from your windscreen and upgrade the software using a PC running Windows 7 8 and 10. The sound quality depends on the quality of your car’s speakers, but if they are high-quality, the Pure Highway 400 is capable of producing a great sound, with more detail than you’d get from FM, provided you have a good DAB signal. Being careful with how you position the receiver can help with this – when I first installed it I failed to heed the instruction’s advice to place it at least 4cm from the metal of the windscreen surround.

You can either plug the receiver into an aux-in socket via the included attachment or it can broadcast to an unused FM frequency like those iPod adaptors from days of yore. Setup was simple and took seconds and it boots instantly so there's no delay from turning the car on to the radio playing.The downside is the need for an extra cable to route, with wires needed for power, the aerial and aux out. One of these technologies was the Flow software platform that allowed Pure to consolidate and stream internet radio. It then has to be set up to receive DAB broadcasts, which is not too tricky, and the car's FM radio has to be tuned on a spare channel to it.