The $99 Boston Acoustics Horizon Solo Ushers a New Radio Era

The two radios above are actually one radio, the $99 Boston Acoustics Horizon Solo. As a radio enthusiast for the last 5 years or so, I am going to go out on a limb and say that the Horizon Solo represents a huge leap in radio innovation, reception, ergonomics, and sound quality, especially when one considers its affordable price point. Let us go over the features that make it clearly superior to its competition (I am not an employee for Boston Acoustics; I am simply assessing its quality in comparison to dozens upon dozens of radios that I own or that I have tried):

1. The sound is big, crisp, bright, detailed, and talk radio sounds intimate. I own the Boston Acoustics Recepter that retails for $150 and the Horizon Solo sounds even better with its 3.5-inch speaker.
2. The interface is easy to use. You simply press the mode button and scroll through the radio bands, the clock, the bass, the treble, etc.
3. The size and shape leaves a small footprint by the bedside. No radio of this size comes close to generating this quality of sound.
4. Now for the most impressive part: The AM/FM reception is amazing. I'm sick of suffering mediocre FM on my Tivoli Model One and Three, my Sangean WR-2. The Horizon Solo leaves these other radios in the dust and it's the least expensive by far. With the Horizon Solo's wire FM antenna hanging below (I don't even bother to elevate it.), the Horizon Solo is grabbing tough-to-get FM stations like 89.3, 88.9, and 103.1 with ease--as good if not better than my legendary Kaito 1103. The tuner is so good, I may have to sell several of my radios throughout the house and replace them with the Horizon Solo. As soon as word spreads about the Horizon Solo's tuner performance, the competition is going to have to go back to their tech department and start all over again. Consumers aren't going to fork out good dough for subpar reception when they can buy a Horizon Solo.

Final Thoughts: The very capable Boston Acoustics Recepter, which retails for $50 more than the Horizon Solo, should be on its way out soon. It has less features than the Solo; it doesn't even have a headphone jack and sure enough the Solo has one. The Solo gets even better reception than the BAR and it has a replaceable grill so that you can get a variety of colors that suit your taste. Moreover, as you can see from the photos above, you can configure the read-out bezel so that the radio is either vertical or horizontal. My congrats to Boston Acoustics for making a radio that smart people want to buy.

For the story of how I by chance stumbled upon the Horizon Solo, which inexplicably was stocked on a Torrance, Ca,Target shelf a month before its official release date, CLICK HERE. 

Update: I bought a second Horizon Solo because my Tivoli Songbook and Tivoli Model Three were performing miserably. Due to the amount of computer interference I was skeptical about the Horizon Solo's AM/FM sensitivity but it pulls in most stations that the Songbook and Model Three could not and unlike the Model Three there is no signal fade. The performance in my interference-laden office attests to the Horizon Solo's superior tuner.

Below is another new offering: The Boston Acoustics Horizon Duo, which retails for about $150 and is being sold at Electronic Warehouse.

Comments

[Ed S.]

OK, you convinced me. I put in an order for a duo today.

[herculodge]

Wow, a duo; I don't even have one. I'll stick to my Solo for now.

[Ed S.]

I like the 5 presets on the Duo. And if the solo sounds so good, then the 2 speakers must make it sound *twice* as good, right?:) An extra 50 bucks for stereo seems fair.

I'm selling the sangean pr-d5... those presets were the only things I liked about the sangean.

[Jeff McMahon]

The Solo has 20 presets. The Duo has fewer?

[Ed S.]

I'm talking about dedicated preset Buttons...the solo has the Receptor's rotary dial for accessing 20 total presets, the duo has 5 AM and 10 FM presets accessible via the 5 buttons on the front, or so the specs say.

[Jeff McMahon]

I stand corrected. Perhaps you can e-mail me your impressions so I can post them on my website. The Horizon Solo has generated more interest, based on hit count, than any post I've done in the last 2 years.

[Ed S.]

Wow, is that so? Never thought our obscure radio hobby was interesting to anyone else...
I think you're getting mucho hits because your site is google's only return whenever anyone googles "BA solo radio".

[Michelle]

Wow, I just stumbled on one at Target yesterday and bought it based on form, function, and sound without knowing a thing about BA. It stood out on the shelf.

I love the user interface, although the buttons are quite sensitive and can be pushed by accident while turning the dial. The reception is amazing, the sound phenomenal. I'm using it to play the FM signal of my Sirius satellite receiver, and it sounds great. One weird thing that happened was the volume got stuck at 9 out of 100 and wouldn't go higher, but I unplugged it for a moment and it returned to normal.

The grilles don't seem available on the BA site yet. Maybe that's because the Solo is not officially released? Anyway thanks for the review.

[Jeff McMahon]

Thanks for telling me about the volume. I've got two bugs: The radio doesn't turn off unless I turn it off twice. Secondly, while playing the radio the time read-out is 5 minutes slow; when I turn the radio off, the time is accurate again.

[Michelle]

Sounds like they needed to do a bit more software testing or QA. 5 minutes slow? What an odd and annoying bug!

[Jeff McMahon]

So in total 3 bugs on Horizon Solo that without the bugs would easily be the best out there. With all the radios I've bought over the last 5 years, I was bound to get a buggy one.

[pilgrim]

The volume limit thing is weird. In trying to fix it when the volume was stuck at 14, I somehow managed to get it stuck at ZERO (which, naturally, isn't very loud). This thing sounds great, but the alarm and clock functions stink -- they're hard to use, hard to turn on, hard to turn off, and hard to read.

[Jeff McMahon]

I know someone who returned his Horizon Solo because of too many bugs. You might return yours for an exchange. I know someone else who returned his Duo (bugs) and Boston Acoustics sent him a good model.

[Ed S.]

Right Jeff, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" ;)

[Jim Harris]

I have returned two Solo radios because of sleep timer malfunction.

Once set, within minutes, the sleep timer randomly counts up and down, shows up on digital display), and then immediately shuts the radio off. This defect also affects the alarm operation.