Gadget: Revo K2 Digital Radio

That space in the corner of your living room is hotly contested.

Pretty much every electronics company has a range of iPod docks claiming to be able to transform your couch into the front row of Glastonbury or the Royal Albert Hall. Bowers & Wilkins lead the pack with its Zeppelin Air blimp-inspired room filler. Revo’s designers have gone for a more industrial look.

And the K2 would not look out of place in a scale model of Manhattan. This 33cm-tall body has several advantages. First, you can dock everything Apple, from an iPhone to an iPad, without it looking silly. Second, all that internal space is put to good use – the K2 has four Balance Mode Radiator speakers that use rare earth magnetics and bending wave technology with pistonic motion. If you think this sounds a bit Back to the Future, you’d be right – Revo has analysed the size and shape of the sound wave generated by the K2 and modified it via Digital Signal Processing to make it as perfect as possible. The result is a thunderous 40 watts of sound output with a detail in the treble that’s unusual for consumer equipment without a pro-price tag. The K2 connects to just about everything, with DAB, DAB+, internet radio, wifi music streaming, FM radio and Last.fm modes. There’s even an app to control it.

The James Bond-inspired motorised retractable iPod dock sums up the K2 – it’s a class act. The design will split opinion, but there’s little doubt the K2’s a top-three performer in the iPod dock premier league.

Revo K2 Digital Radio

£299 from mid-October, www.revo.co.uk, www.amazon.co.uk