OTHER TECH

The only vertically oriented radio in this bunch, the XTR1 looks and feels something like a bulky cellphone. Home, car, and universal mounting kits are available separately ($50 each) and include the respective antennas and power supplies. The radio attaches to the mounts or to other compatible devices like the Stream Jockey boombox via a socket on the bottom edge. It also has a minijack headphone output on its left edge and up/down volume control buttons on the right - a very nice touch. Although the buttons that control everything (no knobs) are laid out well enough, some functions are harder to operate than on the other radios. For example, the 18 channel presets are in 6 banks, and since neither the radio nor the remote has a full numeric keypad, direct channel entry isn't really all that direct. Also, the tuner wouldn't accept commands from the remote if it was too far off-angle. Like the Sportster, the XTR1 has a timer so it can switch to another channel when a program begins.