OTHER TECH

The Short Form

PIONEER $330 PLUS XM SUBSCRIPTION / 2.25 x 4.375 x 1.25 IN / 8 OZ WITH BATTERY / pioneerelectronics.com / 800-746-6337 TAO $299 PLUS XM SUBSCRIPTION / 2.75 x 4.5 x 1.25 IN / 7.25 OZ WITH BATTERY / taolife.com / 800-860-5048

Plus

•Works for portable, home, and car use. •Good sound (with replacement earphones). •Recording and search-by-artist functions. •XM's range of programming.

Minus

•Frequent reception dropouts in hilly/non-urban terrain.

Key Features

•Built-in antenna for outdoor portability •Full home, portable, and car accessories •30 channel presets •Song-memo and artist-alert/search •Can store 5 hours of programming •Can display sports scores or stock prices

Satellite radio is rapidly filling the niche that FM broadcasting occupied 20 - er - 30 years ago. That is, providing a vast array of musical choices without a relentless assault of commercials, DJs, and blather. No wonder XM and Sirius already have millions of listeners, or that people delighted by satellite radio in their cars crave it at home, in the gym, on the bike, or at the seashore.

Enter versatile portables like the two feature-packed XM2go minis seen here. While distinct in styling, they are essentially identical: same features, same functional controls, same displays, same menus, and, as best I could determine, same performance. What's more, the Tao is a near twin to the Delphi MyFi reviewed in the February/March 2005 issue, so everything said there applies here as well.

Like the original MyFi, both portables come heavily equipped with accessories for home, car, and walkabout use - though the supplied earbuds should be scrapped immediately and replaced with a decent pair of in-ear or over-the-ear headphones. Notably, each can record up to 5 hours of programming for those times when XM reception is spotty or impossible, and both can automatically search out your favorite artists on channels you're not listening to. You can store up to 30 presets for favorite channels.

SETUP Setting up either model is a simple matter of turning on the receiver, confirming a good signal, and registering your XM subscription ($13 a month) via the Web or an 800 call. The supplied antennas worked fine, with each unit's home antenna aimed out a southwest-facing window and the car antenna clamped magnetically onto my VW Jetta's roof and connected via the supplied car dock (the antenna's position on the car made quite a difference here).

PERFORMANCE Again, my conclusions apply equally to the Pioneer and Tao. Both were able to drive my Etymotic Research earphones to ample volumes on rock and pop (as on Channel 40, Deep Tracks, a fave), with good but not great clarity and punch - like most headphone portables, they're short on amplifier power and refinement. Sound quality was determined more by XM's compression scheme than the hardware, and it varied depending on the channel. It was very good (by MP3 standards) on many but not all of the music channels - for instance, Steely Dan's "Gold Teeth II," a very familiar track, was eminently listenable. But sound was fairly crude (Internet radio quality) on the sports and talk channels. I concede, though, that being able to listen to broadcasts of my hometown Red Sox throughout a multistate business trip would be pretty cool.

I have a good car system, and what I heard when the portables' line outputs were connected through the car dock was a shade better than via earphones. Both receivers also boast built-in FM modulators for playback through your car radio - convenient but decidedly lower-fi.

Mobile satellite reception where I live in semi-rural New England was variable. Walk-around reception was good on open ground as long as I carried the receivers clipped upright to my belt - both have low-gain antennas built into their top edges. But with even a modest hill or building to the south or southwest, the signal intermittently vanished, and at a walking or jogging pace it could be many minutes before it returned. The same was true in the car in hilly terrain, though dropouts were fewer and, of course, far shorter in duration. Inexplicably, the Pioneer was slightly but distinctly less drop-out-prone in the car. XM operates terrestrial repeaters in most cities that make reception nearly continuous, so if you live in a major urban area or somewhere flat, you should be able to hang onto the signal while outdoors or driving. Indoor dropouts shouldn't be a problem with the stationary antenna connected.

Neither player's display is readable from more than a few feet away, so their supplied remotes are handy for selecting preset stations when the units are in their home docks. And though neither is an ergonomic masterpiece, both are fairly intuitive to use.

These models are so similar that neither their performance, functionality, nor even price will be much of a factor in deciding which one to buy (both are available online for about $200). I liked the Pioneer slightly better, mostly for its styling and its marginally easier-to-press keys. You can choose whichever appeals to you visually, feels good in your hand, or just speaks to your subconscious. You won't go wrong.

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