WiDio Wireless Audio - Review

Installation
When we open up the luxurious box we take note of the fact that Albatron paid good attention to the package and design. When you open up that box everything is well packaged and gives a strong impression, the word quality comes to mind. The bundle we find inside the package is as follows: A user manual, wireless transmitter and receiver, AC power adaptor, mini-headphone to RCA audio cable, RCA-to-RCA audio cable, rechargeable battery pack, ATH-EM7 headphones and carry case, neck strap and finally a Widio carry case.

The entire "hardware" bundle

Installation itself is really easy stuff, nothing PC or hardware related. Just insert the rechargeable 3.6V Lithium Ion 950mAh Nokia 8XX series cell phone battery pack into the Widio receiver and then hook up the device to an audio source with the help of one of the included two cables, namely the standard RCA left/right audio outputs. The other cable you can use is set up for the more common mini-headphone audio output jack, which you will find your PC soundcard. You then press the on button and you are set to go.

No sound? Look at the Transmitter and simply set it to another channel, there are seven of them, Albatron recommends either 0, 2, 4 or 6.

Reception
Albatron's Widio works on the standard 2.4 GHz wireless signal, which is broadly used by Wireless LAN adapters, Wireless Video signals and get this... your microwave. This is also why Wireless LAN performance can drop bigtime when you are nuking your food. My office here is loaded with that stuff (except for that microwave), many channels therefore are occupied. Here in the Guru kingdom we have no less then 4 802.11b/g Wireless LAN devices and also an incoming sat signal is broadcasted through the air towards a TV set, all on that 2.4 GHz band. It's Star Trek in its early stages baby! :)

Anyway, I expected the Widio to have a hard time finding a free channel (frequency) for faultless reception. Much to my surprise when enabling the Widio and pressing the scan button the broadcasting signal was found within a split second and without any issues at all. So I put on the headphones and listened... because that is what it is all about and does.

The device will work fine within 30-40 meters of a house with concrete walls, so that's where the power of this device is to be found. This is reliant on how much power you have in your battery pack. You'll be able to maintain lossless audio for about 4 hours. If the battery dies or you get out of range you'll hear either weird clicks or the sometimes lovely sound of silence.