Last year, at Nokia World 2008, I stumbled across the somewhat hidden demo of a home stereo component that Nokia was working on, dubbed Nokia Home Music. I pressured the guy into a full video demo (you can watch that here), and then continuously tried to get one for review. After not being able to find the device at Nokia World 2009, I was beginning to think that Nokia had canned the project, so you can imagine my surprise and joy at finding out that Nokia Home Music is actually available for purchase in Europe, and expected to launch in the U.S. soon!
I was able to score the only review unit available for a few weeks, to try this thing out in a real-world setting. Read on for the full review, including a video walkthrough of the interface and an overview of the included hardware.
Hardware:
Nokia Home Music is a slightly large wedge-shaped white box that looks really nice. The front of the device has an array of buttons and knobs, as well as a small display. The rest of the front of the box is covered in a white speaker fabric, to hide the loud speaker inside. The back of the Nokia Home Music has a handful of different connectors for various audio output, input, and other peripherals.
The size of the Nokia Home Music isn’t bad, but the shape presents a number of issues, specifically when trying to integrate the stereo into your existing home entertainment system. The wedge shaped design mandates that it occupy its own shelf or sit on top of your other boxes, which could cause issues, depending on your setup. I would like to see a new shape for future versions that rearranges the front buttons for a wider yet thinner stance, similar to a cable TV receiver. Obviously this would require changes to the internal speaker setup, though.
There is also a small white remote included in the box, with the same button array that is on the front of the device.
The buttons on the remote are clear, with the label printed on the back, for a nice look, and offer great tactile feedback when you press them. However, there is no backlight to the keys on the remote, so using it in a darkened room is nearly impossible without a little bit of guess-and-check.
Interface:
The Nokia Home Music interface is roughly similar to the Nseries menu that was previously found on Nokia’s Nseries smartphones, such as the N95 8GB or the N82. Nokia has done a great job of magnifying this interface, though, so that you can almost completely manage the system from across the room, the so-called ’10-foot interface’. Unfortunately, this is one area where the small 3.5-inch QVGA (240x320 pixels) resolution display lets you down -- a larger screen (or even a tv-out option) would have really improved the experience.
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The standby screen shows a row of icons for quick access to Podcasting, Radio, Favorites, Jukebox, or History. From this standby screen, you can also press the options button (see illustration above) to access a number of settings, including the networking setup.
Podcasting:
The podcasting menu looks identical to the Nokia Podcasting application on current phones. You can browse through the pre-loaded directory of podcasts, or you can type your own podcast URL in, if you wish to add one that’s not already available. Entering a URL, though, is quite a frustrating experience, which we’ll cover a little later on. Video podcasts are not supported -- only audio on this bad boy, though with such a small screen and no tv-out options, video would be a terrible experience, anyways.
You can subscribe to podcasts, though they are not stored locally (as best as I could tell). Instead, they are streamed over the network connection. This is actually something that the current phone-based Nokia Podcasting application cannot currently do, and something that users have requested for a long time. Unfortunately, this also means that if your internet connection is down, you cannot enjoy any of your podcasts, which sucks.
Radio:
The Radio feature on the Nokia Home Music includes both FM radio and Internet radio, so that you can enjoy music with or without a network connection. There is an antenna included in the sales package that you can attach to the back of the device to improve your reception, as well. I was able to test the FM radio with a regular radio station and using the FM transmitter on the Nokia N900, both of which worked great.
The Internet radio feature is handy, but not entirely easy to use. For starters, there are so many stations preloaded, it can take a while for you to find what you’re looking for. I also noticed, unfortunately, that the awesome stations from SomaFM were not included by default. Fortunately, there is an option to add your own internet station URL, just like in the podcasting application. Unfortunately, using the built-in keypad is an exercise in frustration, so that after adding only Groove Salad, I couldn’t be troubled to add any more.
Favorites:
You can bookmark any number of media files, regardless of the type, to quickly access them in the future. You can also specify 6 speed-dials, easily accessed through the 1-6 buttons either on the Nokia Home Music itself or on the included remote control. Just like a car stereo, this is the best way to quickly access your favorite tunes or podcast.
Jukebox:
The Jukebox feature is in place to allow you to access more local media. This includes music that might be stored on a USB stick plugged into the back of the Nokia Home Music or any music that is shared over a home network, which is what I used. Browsing the network was easy enough, with most everything automatically being detected. Playback is smooth, too, which makes the experience so much better. I was disappointed to find, however, that the Nokia Home Music does not tag tracks from your home network with a playcount or last played tag, which is really frustrating for me.
History:
The History feature allows you to quickly browse through your recently accessed music, regardless of whether that’s a podcast, radio station, or local music. This is an incredibly handy feature, and one that I used very frequently, as I was constantly forgetting to set a Favorite, and the History option made it much faster for me to find the music I’d listened to previously.
So, if the Nokia Home Music has all of those great music features, what is it missing? Plenty.
Backlight - neither the included remote control or the buttons on the front of the Nokia Home Music are backlit, which makes them nearly impossible to use in the dark. This may not be an issue for you, but it’s such a small feature, we feel it should be included as an option, if nothing else.
Visualization - I don’t know what kind of processor is powering this bad boy, but I have a feeling it is more than capable of showing some sort of visualization during music playback. Almost all desktop music players have some sort of music-generated visualization to keep things interesting, and there’s no reason the Nokia Home Music shouldn’t, either.
Plugins - I realize this isn’t necessarily a product that will create a big community, but it would still be nice to see a few plugins here and there. A great example is Last.FM integration. The Internet radio directory is large, but I still missed the ability to specify an artist/tag and create a custom station myself. I’d also, of course, like to have my music scrobbled to my Last.FM account from the Nokia Home Music.
Phone App -- This thing begs to be used in conjunction with a Nokia Nseries smartphone, especially those touchscreen ones like the Nokia N97, Nokia N900, or Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. I would especially like to see the team come up with an app for these devices that would replace the included remote. Such an application would let me use the touchscreen for more convenient text input, and would add the option for more advanced buttons by simply displaying them on the screen.
Conclusion:
I’m still trying to get an answer from Nokia on how much the Nokia Home Music will cost when it lands in the United States soon. It’s definitely a cool product, and something I think they could sell quite a few of, given that it was marketed to the right crowd, and tied closely to Nokia’s popular music-oriented phones, such as the XpressMusic or Nseries lineup. It should be noted that this thing was supposed to ship in Q2 2008, according to the demo guy from Nokia World 2008, and it’s now Q4 2009 and we don’t have it.
What do you think? Is this something you would be interested in, and if so, how much would this be worth? I struggled to come up with an acceptable price in my own mind. Here’s a video overview of the hardware, including the bundled remote:
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I’m somewhat troubled by the direction Nokia seems to be going at the moment with their products. If they carry on down this road they will end up similar to LG, ie a jack of all trades, rather than a master of one.
I wish they would put all of their resources back into their mobile technology, rather than trying to create some half-baked home entertainment system that, let’s face it, no-one will buy. It may well be a decent device in it’s own right, but people will rather buy a brand they know does home entertainment well such as Panasonic etc.
I could go off on a rant, but I’ll save that for next week when Nokia unveil their new washing machine/oven/BBQ.
the design is awful… looks like these medicals machines in hospital. horrible…
This seems to be a half-assed product and they missed the mark so badly. Look at Sonos to see a proper music device, wireless streaming, support for Pandora, Last.fm, radio, etc. all controlled with a remote with a great display and the ability to control everything from your iPhone/iPod touch. Nokia missed a huge opportunity to do something similar to this, include an app for S60v5 and open up a huge market for the millions of users of touch XM/N-series devices. And seriously? Still a 320×240 display?
Nokia, Nokia, Nokia…hang your head in shame!
I now understand why Nokia handsets have become so flaky, Nokia are trying to do everything instead of focusing on making well designed, well tested handsets. Yes to mobile services, yes to mobile accessories, even possibly yes to the 3G netbook but anything else is spreading the company too thin. Why would anyone buy this device? Apart from the awful design you can be pretty certain that when it fail, Nokia will cast it adrift and there will be no more support for it.
Please forgive a jaded N97 beta tester (oops! I meant owner) for the sarcasm.
I too am amazed that this project wasn’t canceled. An identical unit to this was on display at CTIA in Vegas last year. I don’t think it had a remote though, and the interface looked nothing like that in the above photos. Nokia was giving more attention to their demo of Nokia Magnifier, a Beta Labs Application, than they were to this piece of unique hardware. I had only one question for the woman who was stationed by the display: Whether or not the device had any bluetooth I/O capabilities or if those capabilities were planned. By her non-answer, I could tell she did not work with the project team, and probably only learned about the “Home Music” when she was told she would be demonstrating it. Trade shows are a great place to see the latest devices before they come out, but not always to get any useful information about them :)
omg this is awesome! It’s like a PMP except with a tiny screen. How are the sound dynamics; is it comparable(or better) to a Bose sound system?
A bigger screen and TV out would make this a much better system.
Thanks for the review!
If it were cheap and available in stores, I would buy one
me too.
Did it play Windows Media stations? I think the ones in your example were all MP3.
I've been looking for a decent media streamer for some time. But would have to see it in a store first. Definitely interested though.