Mondo Elite Smart Internet Radio, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 7-Day Alarm – Microphone-Free (Black)

As broadcast radio declines in both quality and quantity, I wanted to improve on my last-century clock radio. This is it! It's compatible with dozens of streaming services. Although there's no provision for receiving broadcast radio, I've found that most broadcast stations also stream their content. I can, if I want, hear the classical subchannel of the local public radio station. This model is also equipped for SiriusXM, so I can wake up to the same programs I hear in my car or listen to one of the extra streams from SiriusXM not available by satellite. The radio looks good and sounds good. It comes with something very rare in the 21st century: a printed manual of almost 50 pages! Setup is not quite as intuitive as I'd like, but the manual makes it easy. Something not mentioned in the description or the manual is that there's a Grace Digital app that will let you adjust settings, including things like alarms. That's a good thing. The radio is on a night table, so about waist height. Changing settings at the radio itself wold break your back! With the app, I can do that using my phone. (There are two apps; the one needed for this GDI-WHA8001 radio is "Grace Elite Remote." Neither app works with older Grace Digital radios.) There's an included remote control, but the app makes it unnecessary. Another reviewer was unhappy with the sound quality. C'mon, man... it's a table radio with one speaker. It's just fine for a clock radio or for casual listening. Someone else was unhappy that the screen was too bright for a dark bedroom at night. That may have been an older model. This one allows you to set brightness for daytime and has another setting for night. You can set the time that the radio switches between day and night. I've set mine to go into night mode at 8:00 PM and return to day mode at 6:00 AM, which is about dawn here. However, it looks like the backlight is always full-on and the brightness is controlled using the liquid crystal layer of the display. There's a fair amount of light leakage. Hey Grace Digital engineers! How about some pulse-width modulation on the backlight to set brightness, and some high-contrast color choices for us geezers? The radio has built-in soothing "sleep sounds" like waves, surf, or rain. The sleep sounds are in the Music Services menu section. The alarm mode will override those soothing sounds, so you can go to sleep with distant surf and wake to Phil Phlash in the morning. Once you set the time zone, the radio gets, and keeps, the correct time over the Internet using something called Network Time Protocol, or NTP. Time zones are represented as continent and city, so U. S. Eastern is "America/New York." Of course this radio won't play CDs, but you can rip your CDs to one of those mini "plug and stay" USB drives. The radio will play all files in a directory, although you must pick one file to start. So, you can organize your playlists into directories on the USB drive. Very cool! The USB socket in my radio is upside-down; it could be a manufacturing defect, or maybe they're all that way. You have to tilt the USB drive down about 20 degrees to insert it. It should really be right-side-up and exactly horizontal. :-( It's not perfect in a few other ways. One gripe is that you can't use the "built-in" Chromecast to SEND music from the radio to other devices. I almost went down to four stars because of that. It does have a headphone jack that could be connected to line-in on an amplifier... uh, if the amplifier were close by. The package includes a 3.5mm to RCA cable kit. You can send the output to a Bluetooth headphone or speaker. I've used the Anker Soundsync A3352 Bluetooth receiver that's on Amazon to send the output to my 20th century under-cabinet radio in the kitchen, with two difficulties. The radio speaker is silenced when a Bluetooth device is connected, so no multi-room. Grace Digital could fix that with a "Silence speaker when Bluetooth is connected" check box in settings that could be unchecked for multi-room playing. Also, the app won't control Bluetooth, so pairing a device in another room takes some running back and forth. GDI could fix that, too, by adding Bluetooth to the app. You might be able to get multi-room over Bluetooth with some Bluetooth mesh speakers. That's above my paygrade. My last gripe is that there are built-in alarm sounds for those who don't want radio in the morning. I've found no way to preview those sounds other than to set an alarm for "a minute from now" and See What Happens. I'd buy another if I needed one someplace else.

Outstanding. I've been holding off buying this because it was expensive, but this was a Christmas present to myself. Where I live, the Boston Radio stations don't carry CBS AND ABC RADIO NEWS ON THE HOUR. So being able to pull in WBBM NEWSRADIO CHICAGO AND KOMO NEWSRADIO IN SEATTLE gave me those NEWS STATIONS. Also a local power grid absolutely kills my AM RADIO reception. Now I can pretty much program EVERY Radio station in the Boston and Worcester markets. Overall it's easy to set up. They give you 5 Presets on the physical buttons for your 5 absolute favorites, but you literally have 100 Favorite Stations for Internal Presets. Just be patient on finding your stations. For example, I wanted to make 98.5 The Sports Hub a Preset and it didn't work. But I did find it listed another way and it DID work. If you use radiolocator.com to see every station in your market, you can find every station you want. I wound up programming my distant stations first and then all my local stations in order by Radio frequency AM and FM. It also has Sirius XM! All you need is your Internet Access Sign in and Password from your Sirius XM ALL ACCESS SUBSCRIPTION and you're in. I easily connected this unit to my 36 Year Old Pioneer Home Stereo and the sound quality was amazing. There were a few reviews on this unit saying the sound quality was lousy. That is simply NOT TRUE. If you hook up this radio to a home stereo, it is beautiful. I have absolutely NO problem with this unit sound wise by itself. The Audacy Music Stations are all there including JACK FM KCBS FM in Los Angeles and KROQ too. And all Audacy CBS NEWS stations like WCBS in NY, KNX in Los Angeles and KCBS in San Francisco are there. You also have access to the many HD radio stations out there. FYI, many radio stations are no longer blacking out Sporting Events on their stations. I pulled in the Patriots game on 98.5 The Sports Hub last Sunday and psyched it to my DIRECT TV and it was beautiful. FYI everybody, INTERNET RADIO has about a 2 minute delay. If you can live with that, then this radio is awesome. With my DirectTV receiver DVR that pauses, I had no problem psyncing the TV to this radio.. This Radio in every aspect is a winner and hits it out of the park.

This is a great radio. I was able to get everthing set up without reading the booklet. Then couldn't find a couple of my stations, and after registering online, was able to add them. I love that it has 10 presets on the remote, with up to 100 total. You can add streaming, podcasts, internet stations and radio apps like Spotify, Amazon Music, etc. You can also bluetooth from your phone or tablet, or use a USB stick, or RCA cable. I am enjoying having a mute button, and snooze alarm (and regular alarms may be set). This is replacing my Bose radio (beginning February 2026, Bose radios will no longer support internet stations - basically it will turn into a speaker to use with your phone apps). Only one con: I would've liked a wood finish instead of black plastic.

This would be a five star review except for one small flaw...the power cord is too short and stiff. Which makes it entirely too easy to knock the cord out when the unit is on the nightstand - and without the cord, no power, and no alarm clock! Yes, there is an optional battery (which works well, but is not included - and they are up front about it, so not a surprise), which I would recommend. The fix is to buy DC Extension Cable 5.5mm x 2.1mm 90 degree, Amaznoo item number B0BVQF2YZB, for $6. This extends the power cord and makes a much better connection. The radio sounds superb - on par with a Bose or Tivoli, feels very well made, and works exactly as described. The only downside is that some radio stations internet presence isn't entirely reliable. Not much you can do about that! I highly recommend it, assuming you add the 3 foot extension cable.

EDIT - I received a message from Grace digital about my review. They were disappointed that I did not contact them concerning my inability to find BBC stations. Apparently there are a ton of BBC stations BUT you cant find them from within the "Internet Radio" app (where I was looking) but from the "Music Services" app (where I didnt look, I figured "This is an **internet radio** and I am looking for **internet radio** stations"). Fair enough, though I question their software design decision to have TWO different places to look for internet radio stations. And if I search for "BBC" and you dont return to me that there are BBC stations in another app on your device, that is your fault. I should not have to contact someone about something so trivial. But, I have to applaud them for reaching out to me, it appears they must have decent service and support. Yes, I tried the EQ as they stated in their message. It made barely any difference. The sound on a $200 device should be a lot better than terrible. And it isnt. END OF EDIT ____________________________________________________________________ I cant believe in this day and age that something can sound so uninspiring. Tinny and terrible, AM radio quality. I mainly bought this for internet radio. So lets search for the BBC by location...Europe....United Kingdom....and you will be greeted with a gigantic list of stations like #1 80s hits, #1 Jazz, #1 Rock. These dont look unique to England, just generic internet stations. Start scrolling and **NETWORK ERROR WITH SERVER**** . Choose a different country and you get the SAME exact list starting with #1 80s Hits. Why even have the "search by country" menu item if you are going to dump a ton of unsorted stuff on us. OK, lets try to search BBC by name. Enter BBC and you get ONLY these results, nothing else: BBC Arabic BBC Radio Derby BBC Radio Scotland MW BBC West Africa KUER2 BBC WYPR-HD2 Where are the tons of BBC stations to access? Perhaps these were eliminated in a firmware update? Anyways, I am very disappointed and sent the unit back.

What a great product! I love that it allows me to connect my SiriusXM subscription to it so that I can play all the music I love on there. I love that I can set my wake-up alarm to use my SiriusXM subscription. It is really pretty easy to use. The sound took a little getting used to from my old Aluratek clock radio (which stopped receiving Internet Radio stations on it), but it actually sounds really good. Once you understand the buttons, they're pretty intuitive to use. Lastly, I really love when I go to bed, I can put a timer on how long the music should play for and it ever so gradually fades out to nothing. I mean it really takes its time fading out so it's not noticeable at all when you're asleep (like a mother singing a lullaby to their baby).

There is one radio station in our area and the programming is not anything we prefer. We had been using a tablet to stream Amazon and Sirius, which worked but was clunky. We did a fair amount of research and ordered the Mondo Elite. It arrived in perfect condition and packed well. Setup was easy and straightforward. The radio found our network quickly and connecting to Amazon, Sirius, and iHeart went without a hitch. Connected to our home theatre receiver. The sound is much improved over the tablet and navigation is easy. We are looking forward to listening to our favorite music for a long time.

Fantastic product. Exceeded expectations.

Me gustó mucho este radio. Bonito diseño. Puedo sintonizar cientos o miles de estaciones de radio y es muy práctico que se pueden guardar las estaciones favoritas. Esperaba más de la potencia de su bocina, pero tiene varias opciones para conectar audio, ya sea entrada o salida. Tiene auxiliares de audio, salida y entrada; Bluetooth, recepción y emisión; así como el Chromecast y la posibilidad de enlazar varios radios en diferentes lugares. Además puede funcionar con pilas si se desea y un plus el que trae su control remoto. Es muy fácil acceder a muchas estaciones de radio de diferentes partes del mundo y es sencillo enlazarlo a la red de internet.

This is an excellent product so far. It allows you access to a whole range of satellite radio stations of different musical, and news genres. I’m using it in a slightly more remote area where other more conventional radios were a complete failure. The stylistic aesthetic is very good and the economics to use particularly for an older person is quite easy. Also has the added benefit of connecting to Bluetooth.

Love this radio, use it everyday, and the presets make it easier for my wife, who has eye problems, to listen to her favourite stations from the UK, and here in Canada.

First obtained because of poor radio reception at our new location, but great to have the wide selection of international stations and a better sound quality (appreciated for our favorite classical music) than our old am/fm receiver. Really like the remote control. Accessing bluetooth could be simplified, as it now takes several steps to get there.

I purchased an identical radio a few years back - identical. Grace stopped supporting it. It then goes dead. I purchased another- it works, but if grace pulls its support again we the consumer are left with a paper weight. I can’t suggest that you don’t purchase one, but grace has a history of withdrawing its support and the radio becomes useless. It’s a gamble.