ROXi Electronic Jukebox Review

Reviewed by Louise Totton

Most of us are used to TV streaming systems, with many of us having multiple film and TV streaming service subscriptions and a number of different hardware options to stream them from. DVD players seem to have vanished from lounges and we are replacing them with the convenience of having thousands of films and TV series available, on demand, via dedicated devices that plug into the HDMI port of modern TVs. Music streaming, by comparison, doesn’t seem to have moved on quite as much – I have a Spotify subscription on my phone which is fine when I want to use my earbuds and listen on my own but less good when we want to have background music on in the house or listen to music together. I can, and do, stream music from my phone to our Bluetooth speaker but the issue with this is it means that the kids can’t listen to music if I’m out of the house, and if I want to use my phone to play a game or make a call, the music streaming is interrupted.

Well, we have been trying out a device that could solve these issues; that promises to allow us to share music as a family, that will keep the kids off my phone when they can’t agree on whether they want to listen to Miley Cyrus or George Ezra and that adds a whole host of other features to boot on a dedicated set-top box with a TV-based visual interface. The ROXi box from Electronic Jukebox is a small, plug-in box that connects to your TV via a HDMI port. The initial £99.95 purchase price even includes 12 months of access to their premium music service (£52 per year / £1 per week after the first year), and there are a whole host of innovative features ready to discover too.

So, first thing’s first: what is the ROXi? Well, put simply, it is a plug-in box which runs its own music subscription service. As well as having a vast library of tracks available to search and stream (currently over 40 million), ROXi also boasts hundreds of playlists, thousands of radio stations from around the world and even a library of around over 60,000 songs as part of ROXi’s karaoke function, Sing with the Stars. To enhance the social and family offering, ROXi even includes music-based games, and there is a selection of soothing and therapeutic sounds for when you just need to relax. We couldn’t wait to try it out, and there was an awful lot of excitement in the house as we unpacked it. Contained in the box is:

• ROXi box
• ROXi remote
• Power cable for ROXi box
• HDMI cable
• Micro USB cable for charging the remote

That was literally it – no instructions as the box promised the system could be set up in minutes without the need for instructions! That’s always a massive plus point when you have two kids chomping at the bit to set something up, as there’s nothing worse than a complicated set up and having to concentrate on a set of instructions. All we had to do was plug the ROXi into the power socket and connect it to the TV via the included HDMI cable. There was no need to charge the remote – it comes fully charged, so you really can get going straight away. When the ROXi powered on, a message on the screen asked us to press a couple of buttons on the remote to pair it to the box and another button press to confirm we were ready for our 12 month initial subscription to commence. We connected ROXi to our home WiFi network and that was literally it – we were ready to go!

The interface of the ROXi box is immediately intuitive and we found it very easy to navigate right from the start. The remote control is used to interact with the system, but it may be a little different to most of the remote controls you have used before! The first and most immediate difference as you are using it is that it is pointed at the screen where a curser appears. It works rather like the WiiMote on the original Nintendo Wii, so instead of pointing the remote at the TV and using curser buttons to navigate the menus, you actually point this one at the part of the screen you want to select, then click the ‘OK’ button.

The other difference with this remote is how it looks – rather like a remote / microphone hybrid. We thought it was super cool and pretty quirky that the remote of a dedicated music entertainment system would look like a remote, but it also serves another really cool purpose too. ROXi features voice search as well as text search, so you can speak into the remote to search for your music. It is also used for the Sing with the Stars karaoke function and having the remote shaped like this makes singing into it feel far more natural than if it had been a standard remote control.

The first thing that we wanted to try out was the standard, unlimited streaming. This is accessed via the first section of the carousel and I have to say that we were impressed. You can search by artist, by song or by album, and this can be done either via voice search or text search. The voice search is fantastic for if you’re used to using an Alexa or other smart speaker, and my youngest in particular likes this method as she hasn’t quite got the patience or spelling skills to be able to spell out some of the music that she wanted to listen to. Once you have found a song that you like, there’s the option to add it you your favourite music to make it easier to find next time and also to list more tracks or albums by that artist. We particularly liked this function as it’s an awful lot easier than searching again from scratch when you suddenly remember another song that you want to listen to by that artist.

Admittedly we do have quite mainstream tastes when it comes to music, but so far, every request we have had for ROXi has been available. We do have some quite wide-ranging tastes though, and there has been a good selection of 50’s/60’s music as well as country music, modern pop, 80’s rock and even stuff that the kids specifically liked and Mozart! For when you’re not quite sure what you want to listen to, the Playlist function really is fabulous. There are hundreds of playlists on there, organised by genre, and the selection of music in the ones I have listened to is fabulous – a nice mixture of material that I was familiar with as well as some that I was just discovering for the first time, but all of which fitted perfectly with the mood of the playlist.

The bits that the kids were most keen to get their mitts on was the Sing with the Stars karaoke function, which should come as no great surprise! ROXi’s catalogue features around 60,000 songs where you can Sing with the Stars. Sing with the Stars is exactly that – it’s not true karaoke; you’re singing alongside the original artist. We actually quite liked this – we have older, CD-based karaoke machine in the house from years ago and the kids struggle with it as they need to take cues from the singer when they sing along – ROXi gives them the opportunity to do this so they don’t miss their place or forget the words! Having said that, the words do appear on-screen the same way as they would with a traditional karaoke system so the whole experience is great fun! We did find that the mic was a little quiet on our upstairs TV, even on full volume, but when we moved it to the main TV downstairs that is connected to a proper speaker system, the experience improved a lot. We all loved how natural the remote felt to use as a microphone and we thought it added to the experience massively.

The Name the Song game was a hugely surprising hit in the house too – we didn’t have particularly high expectations of it and thought it might be something that you would play with once and never again. We couldn’t have been more wrong, and we have had such fun together as a family playing it! The game is incredibly simple to play – you choose your genre and click ‘start’. The introduction to a song is played whilst the clock is ticking down and you have 30 seconds to correctly identify the track from four possible options. It’s actually a lot harder than it sounds, and when you add in the time pressure and the fact that you only have three lives and are watching them vanish before your eyes, the pressure soon ramps up! We loved this, and have played it as Adults vs Kids, Girls vs Boys and every man for himself, with everyone allowed to choose their own favourite type of music. It truly is fantastic fun and a brilliant addition to the box, especially when you consider the objective to enjoy spending time together with music.

The ROXi also has access to literally thousands of online radio stations from around the world. I’m pretty boring when it comes to radio and tend to stick to Radio 2 (it’s on there!), but there is an awful lot of choice and I would imagine there will be something for everyone. The final thing that I want to mention, as this is something that we have been using with the kids as a family, is the Family Protect function on the box. This removes all explicit content from the search at the touch of a button, so there is no chance of the kids stumbling across Smokey and Roy Chubby Brown, and querying why he doesn’t know who Alice is! 

I am truly delighted with ROXi – at £99.95, it is a real bargain, especially when you consider that this includes £52 worth of subscription. Even after the first year, when you do have to pay if you wish to maintain a premium subscription, it’s less than half the price of most of the big music streaming services and, at least for us, contains all of the music we could ever want along with some other fantastic features thrown in too. If you don’t want to continue the premium subscription, that’s fine too and your box will revert to a more basic, cut-down package with adverts and more limited search functionality. But for the price that it is, I will certainly be renewing mine!

I think this would make a superb Christmas present for any music-lover. It is available in blue, red or black – we were sent the black one which looks great in the lounge but the coloured ones would be a great gift for a teenager who may want something a bit different. I would absolutely recommend this to anyone who is looking for a more convenient way to stream music, or even someone who just loves gadgets! It’ll certainly provide lots of fun over the Christmas period and is perfect for parties and get-togethers.

Rating: 5/5

RRP: £99.95

For more information or to buy visit roximusicsystem.com.