Grace Digital Encore+ Wireless Stereo Smart Speaker & Internet Radio with Wi-Fi + Bluetooth & 3.5" Color Display Walnut (GDI-WHA7505)

I'm not the type that usually takes the time to write a review for anything, but sitting here listening to my Encore + has motivated me to do this. I have had this unit running in my home office for about three months now, and I just enjoy it more and more every day. I have owned the Mondo and Mondo + units for a while now, and really enjoy both of them also. The Encore + though just takes it to another level. The audio quality is really nice and the inclusion of the Maxx 3D feature really makes the stereo separation sound wide. This is really important when the Encore + is sitting in front of you at eye level about a foot away as I am. As close as I am, there is still a very nice "sweet spot" right where it is needed. The down firing woofer produces a lot of bass for a system this size. As far as overall volume, it goes way higher than I can stand at close range and works well if you have a need to fill an area with a lot of clean sound. It can also wake up the rest of your family if you are so inclined and crank it up :-) The feature set included with the Encore + is a nice mix that covers my needs. The Chromecast ability makes it very easy to listen to music services controlled through your smart phone and opens up a lot of additional audio sources. The built-in Sirius XM ability works great and allows me to get something out of the subscription service when I am not in the car (it does require the All Access subscription). The internet radio side is still as awesome here as in the older Grace "radios". With the smart phone remote app, I find this much easier to use with the Encore + and have found many new "stations" that I enjoy. Preset 1 is MOROW.COM where I get my daily progressive rock fix :-) The latest feature I have started using is the Aux In jack with a vintage 4G iPOD that was collecting dust. This combination sounds fantastic, and breathes life into an older device as well. So what do I not like about the Encore +? The only minor gripe I have ever had with it and the Mondo + is the lack of the built-in Pandora app. As has been detailed in other reviews and answers to questions, this is not something Grace Digital did on their own but is a change in what Pandora allows them to do. As I got used to using the Chromecast feature from my smart phone, I have gotten used to the "new" way of listening to Pandora and am quite happy with it now. The last comment I will share is that Grace Digital support of their products is outstanding. They are a small company, and one of the the benefits is that the company executives making the decisions are also hands-on and involved with product support. I have seen several software update/enhancements pushed out for the Mondo+/Encore+ that add significant new features along with the occasional fix for a defect. Most impressive is that a lot of the enhancements are coming from requests made by customers. Take a look at the many answers posted by Grace Digital to questions asked here and you will see what I mean. You just don't see this level of customer involvement from a lot of other companies these days along with the transparency they have when they share product news with their customers. I find it most refreshing to see their detailed explanation of software updates that tell us the good and bad. If they know of a defect that remains, they share what they can and tell us what the next steps in getting a resolution will be along with the expected delivery date where possible. If you're sitting on the fence making a decision to go with the Encore +, go ahead and do it. You will not be disappointed. I suspect you will come to love yours as much as I do mine. UPDATE - April 2021 Just wanted to share that a new firmware was released recently that adds NATIVE Pandora support back to the Plus series radios. This both surprised and delighted me as a Grace Digital customer since the radio is no longer made or sold. This says a lot about the customer support they provide, and I wanted to share this and give them the credit they deserve for doing this. There are very few companies that would have spent the money required to create an update for a product that is now obsolete, and when we see this happen we should acknowledge it with our future business. The Encore + still gets daily use and has not had any issues at all after several years. Looking forward to several more years of the same.....

Amazing sound for its size. It is hard to find where this fits in and that is because, it fits everywhere. It functions awesome as a bedside clock radio but a huge clock radio it is... It will will do parties as a stereo receiver because it had the all the sounds of some heavy digital receiver and more... really well... and oh the sound....the sound is absolutely amazing. Get your built-in EQs straight... You will be amazed! Loud? Yes... very very very loud. It will disturb the neighbors especially the bass, if you are in an apartment. Has awesome controls, a remote control, albeit the lack of a touch enabled screen. Good luck finding the enter button. Set up was a breeze but the enter button is tricky to find. For radio stations, here's what you need to know. This thing does internet radio, bluetooth & has google chromecast built-in. Sirius Radio if it interests you is also built in. Radio stations galore, from every corner of the world You can bluetooth your music or chromecast it. I prefer chromecast especially for Pandora and Google Play Music as you get to see the album art on screen. If you bluetooth your content, you don't see the album art on screen. You only see the name of the bluetooth device you are using. All in all it is a machine that will stand out and is one to be reckoned with. Small enough to fit your kitchen counter, big enough to wow the audiophiles. Feature packed, more on the heavy side of things but i use it all over the house, remembers your internet settings even after you unplug it. Awesome sleep sounds and large clock (which keeps time!!) on screen while powered off. Anything and everything you can stream over the network or Bluetooth or chromecast... you have an awesome sound system in this GraceDigital. At bedtime, some quiet bassy jazz music will soooooothe you into the realm of night and dream. What an amazing machine this is.

Overall, the unit functions well and meets my expectations. One of the best features is that it has an integrated SiriusXM app. Almost no other streaming radios have this. Some issues and suggestions for improvement noted below. Sound Quality. I am an engineer and have been an audiophile for 35 years. I have training in acoustics and speaker/amplifier design. The sound quality of this unit is satisfactory considering its size and price, but it is certainly nowhere close to flat and of course there is no true bass extension. At default settings the mid-bass is overemphasized making male voices sound unnaturally chesty. This is a common trick to make small speakers like those in this unit seem to have some bass. But it makes voices sound unnatural and is annoying. The treble is also a bit erratic in frequency response, with noticeable sibilant "S" when spoken sentences end in "S" (i.e., such sentences end with a hissing sound). I recommend turning down the bass control to -3. I own several Tivoli products and find that they have slightly better sound quality. User Interface. The menu system is reasonably clear and actually pretty easy to use after a short learning period. I wish the standby screen brightness could be turned down a bit further as it is still al little too bright for a bedroom in my opinion. The buttons on the top of the unit need improvement. There is an undifferentiated grid of buttons for station presets, info, etc. The button layout makes no sense and is awkward to use. I guess they expect people to use the remote control, but a remote does not make much sense if you are using this as a bedside clock radio that is arm's reach away. Also, the buttons on the top of the unit must be pressed firmly straight down or they sometimes don't register the push. This gives the buttons a cheap unreliable feel. The phone app is buggy so don't count on using it. The main problem is that it is very sluggish and there is a significant delay in it being able to display your saved stations and execute commands. In addition, many of my saved stations don't appear in the displayed list, or they appear and then disappear. WiFI. The unit has two large wifi antennas on the back. These are somewhat of an eyesore. I fail to understand the necessity. This is not 2003, and wifi works quite well nowadays with modern wifi transceivers and internal antennas (see every phone, tablet, and laptop on the market). So why the two large antennas? Cabinet. Strangely, the walnut cabinet came unfinished. Thus, it looked a bit dry and "thirsty." Not a problem for me, as I applied three coats of Hope's tung oil and now it looks rich and terrific. Finally, the unit occasionally (once a week or so) freezes up and crashes. One time the alarm did not go off because the unit had crashed. [perhaps a memory leak?]. This requires a reset by unplugging the unit and plugging it back in. I'm hoping this will get corrected soon with a firmware update.

I love the fact that I can listen to hundreds of “ channels “ in most areas of the U.S. I am in Reno Nevada now. I grew up in the Bay Area. I can get my fave talk radio stations now. The endless Podcasts...amazing. The radio is WiFi and has Stereo. That said it isn’t like high end sound system, but the quality is crisp and clear. I have a subscription to Serious XM and now I can unplug and move this amazing radio anywhere in the house to listen to my fave Stations. My huge joy is Serious XM will be adding a dedicated station for U2...my forever best band. I had help setting it up. My friend has the same radio. So it takes some time to understand moving around with the remote to add stations. Time and a bit of patience. I didn’t think I’d be able to “ get,it “. I was going to return it. But I changed my mind. For the price I paid thru Amazon, I will “ Get it “ I especially love the soothing sounds to fall asleep to. The remote is easy to lower the volume and the sleep sound choices are so great. And stereo in a small footprint that is nice looking, I think is a wonderful purchase. I bought the wood tone. I like better than black. Once I get more familiar with this Grace Digital Internet Radio, I’ll be quite happy. I recommend.

I have purchased five of these radios. Two of which did not work out of the box. I got the other three working but now one of the three has stopped working. I was using the RCA analog audio out jack on the back of the radio to hook the radio up to a headphone amplifier. It was working fine, but I decided to switch back to using the built in speaker and now I cannot get any sound from it. I have talked to Grace Digital support and they were of no help. If you decide to buy one of these radios send it back immediately if it doesn't work. If it does work then don't change how you hook it up because then it might stop working. If it does stop working you can try doing a reset to the original factory settings. This has not worked with the radio that just stopped working, but it did work for the other two radios I kept. With those two radios when I unpluged them and moved them to an different location they would not work until I reset them one or more times.

UPDATE After spending some time with this I can really appreciate its excellence. I have been enjoying listening to streaming stations from all over the world, with crystal clear sound. I like how you can assign Internet stations to presets and use them for alarms. I have been playing podcasts, SiriusXM and Pandora. And I love how I can control it with Google Home. The sound is rich and clear. It is beautifully made. This is a great value for the money. Original review: I replaced a SiriusXM TTR2 with this, in a Google Home environment. The sound quality is a lot clearer and pleasing. The many extra functions are delightful. It is beautifully made. However the controls are wonky. It's hard to operate without looking at the buttons, unlike the TTR2. It might help if they added the context sensitive buttons to the remote - hopefully they will. Chromecast allows me to start music streaming from other network devices. The USB play is excellent. The Zappa Halloween USB album plays gapless and without issue - and sounds terrific. By the way the Ethernet adapter for the TTR2 works fine in this unit. My other minor gripe is real estate. It takes over most of my table. Oh well. I think this is a great value for the money and am generally very pleased.

I had a Logitech Squeezebox Boom before this and lightning stuck, literally struck my house. So I needed to find a suitable replacement. I searched and searched and came across this unit with good reviews for sound and features. I was excited, but have been let down terribly. It has bluetooth, but I cannot make it work reliably. If I connect from my device, the unit will turn on and off a few times and sometimes connect. So I have tried the Cast feature to instead send over wifi, but that too is very glitchy and unreliable. When I want to listen to music it needs to be easy and just work. I should not have to spend 2-5 mins f'n around with settings before I can stream. The casting then will sometimes get out of sync with my device so it is still running on the Encore+, but my device no longer controls it. I also have problems with it loosing wifi connection in the middle of a radio stream. Even though my laptop and other devices work perfectly next to it, the Encore+ (even with two big antenna) loses connection. The audio is OK, it gets loud, but the bass and sound quality is nowhere near the Squeezebox Boom. I would rate the Boom at a 7/8 and this at a 5. It mostly sits around gathering dust. I have worked with their support on the issues and been through numerous software updates, but to no avail. Would I buy again, that would be a hard no.

After 50 years of putting up with cheap radio alarm clocks I finally decided to treat myself to something with decent sound quality. I scoured Amazon reading all the reviews and ultimately chose this one. And I couldn't be more pleased. I have it tuned into my favorite station on I Heart Radio and the sound is really rich and full. The bass is really good for its size. (I'm a bass player, so I care a lot about that.) In fact the sound is so good it almost makes it a joy to wake up in the mornings. Regarding the cabinet, this thing is beautiful. i went with the walnut finish. Other reviews claim the wood is unfinished but that's not true. Maybe they changed it, but mine has a very nice satin finish There is also a review that mentions the clock letters are too small to read when the radio is playing. That was true when I first got it and I was a little bummed about it, but the Grace Digital folks pushed out an update recently that cured that problem. The screen can now be configured to leave the 3/4" tall numbers on all the time. And I want to mention one other nice feature. We have Cox cable so our internet is not super reliable. I was a little worried about what would happen if the our internet went down when it was time to wake up. I got my answer the other day... it outputs a pleasant beeping sound similar to a normal alarm clock except not as annoying.

2 speakers for music