In today’s world of Smartphones, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that once upon a time, you had to use an antenna to get a radio signal. Sure, nowadays you can just stream whatever radio station you want through a 3G (or better) connection, but once upon a time, digital radio was a fantastic achievement, giving crystal clear audio quality and enabling people who lived in more remote areas to get local radio from other areas, 6 Music, for example.

So it’s great to know that people like Aves are still out there, putting out high quality DAB Radio units, for those who like a more traditional aesthetic, an actual radio in their house. Even better, due to the size of the Tango model, it’s a great solution for a kitchen, or similar room in the house.

Let’s start with a look at the radio itself then. A classy wood finish surrounds the Tango, with a stereo speaker setup enclosing the buttons and the LCD display. The buttons themselves, when pushed, indent into the radio meaning that if you do use the device in a kitchen, you won’t have to worry about small pieces of dirt getting into the cracks in the device. The LCD is clear and bright, and the device itself makes for easy use. The antenna extends as far as you’d expect, but even in my location – an area where I get notoriously poor reception – it barely needed extended at all to get the CD quality audio you’d want from a DAB.

There are 20 preset stations on the Tango, and those unfamiliar with Digital Radio will be surprised to see the LED screen display not just the time and the station you are tuned to, but even the show that is currently airing. You can (of course) manually tune to other stations too, so don’t fret if you don’t like the presets.

If you want to, you can run the radio on batteries (it takes 4 C-sized batteries, not included) but that’s a quick way to become poor, and you’ll be better off using the included AC adapter to run it. The Tango can comfortably be used at high volume without too much degradation in audio quality, because the stereo speakers seem of reasonably high quality, thankfully. At soft volume, it’s ideal for waking up to, which is handy as the Tango has a built in alarm, to go along with its auto-time updating feature.

VERDICT: The Aves Tango DAB is a fantastic solution for anyone who wants to have a standalone DAB radio in their home. It’s small, but packs a punch in terms of volume, and it won’t let you down with its audio quality. It won’t break the bank either at (around) £60, which is a competitive price in its market. You could do much worse than adding this to your collection, lest we forget where we came from. And that’s the only question that the Tango leaves unanswered, really: Do people still want a standalone radio in their home? You decide!