Shortwave & All-Hazard Radios ReviewsShortwave & All-Hazard Radios Buying guide , Cheap Shortwave & All-Hazard Radios , Discount Shortwave & All-Hazard Radios.

Good buy
After the hurricane hit Houston this was a necessity for my family for over a week! Worked just as it was suppose to.

Does almost everything
We started playing with this right away, even though it is really for our emergency kit. It is heavy duty and holds a charge real well. We could listen to TV or the radio. It has a goofy port for "charging your cell phone" that we can't figure out. Our cell phones don't hook up to that, and there are no directions. At all. You just open this and play with it. No directions at all. But we got one for each of our grown children too.

Just Right for the Price
I originally bought a "Jeep" all weather radio for my husband for Christmas - I thought paying more might mean a better product; not so, the hand crank broke on 2nd use. I then ordered this one - my hubby loves it. It contains everything we would want for an emergency radio; we have no problems picking up any of the t.v., National or local stations. The light is sufficient for an emergency and the Alert would definitely get you out of bed. The only issue we have seen is that we had it on one night and the alarm went off for no apparant reason...If not for that I would have given it 5 stars. I think this is a must for any household that lives in a storm prone area (which seems to be just about anywhere now a days): I definitely feel comfortable going to bed if severe storms are predicted using this radio rather than spending the entire night watching the t.v. which is what I always did in the past...A good buy in my book.

Emergency Radio
Received this emergency radio several weeks ago, and I have used it several time since then (thank the Lord not in an emergency situation though!). It worked great out of the box. Did everything that was promised it would do. The only draw back is that I still have not received the cell phone adapters that I sent for when I received the radio. I guess it takes the company awhile to get them into the mail to me? Otherwise, a great emergency radio!

Decent Product
This is a good radio and I was glad I had it when my power was out for 9 days during hurricane Ike. However, I thought the sales description said you could pick up the audio of 13 local TV stations and that is not the case so that part was disappointing during the hurricane and I would have preferred TV news audio to radio news.

Great Little Radio
This is one of the best little pocket radio's I have ever owned. About the size of a deck of cards, and with a good set of ear phones it sounds really great. Reception is good here in LA, but we have allot of local stations and am not sure how it'll work on weak signals.

I consider this radio a little on the expensive side, but is made well and should last a long time. The small speaker works, but does not sound very good. So if you plan on using the speaker rather than ear buddies. Pass this little jewel over, but if planning on using ear phones, this is the one to buy.

Pocket Pal
I'm not much with words. Suffice it to say that this is my 3rd Sangean radio. They are simply the best on the market. I see it will be necessary to purchase anothr one, my wife confiscated this one.
Richard L. Eckstein, Bloomfield, New Mexico.

Almost Perfect
If this was my first radio, I would have given it five stars, however, this is NOT my first portable radio, five stars implied perfect. This radio is a great radio but not perfect. The missing star is for two minor thing. Number one.. the speaker (volume not high enough and can get lost in some noise. Number 2... lack of telescoping antenna for FM reception. For someone who never had a pocket radio, the externals speaker might sound just fine. But since I had grundig 300 to compare it to, the external speaker on grundig 300 is far more superior than the external speaker of the Sangean DT-400 of the same size(probably 3-4 times louder). But the grundig 300 has it own flaws also. eg no preset button and the stations drifts. Otherwise the Sangean DT-400W is a good personal radio. that can last a long time. Note: that is how much we spend on filling up our cars that barely last a week.

Sangean DT-400W the best
My wife and I have shared a DT200 for the past 6 to 8 years. it still works fine but I bought her this one for her so I can share the old one more often.

Great Little Radio
Use it when I am working outside mowing. Wear Earmufs over the radio. Like to use it when I am relaxing in the tub reading a book.

Excellent Portable For The Price Class
Extremely nice, easily configured potable radio. AM broadcast band and FM performance is exceptionally good. SSB (Single Side Band) although BFO tuned, is very good. Shortwave performance is on par with radios in the 0.00 price class. Display back lighting is great and the display is easily read. Although a bit more expensive than the Sony ICF-SW7600GR, and does not offer synchronous detection, it is worth the price.

Note: Some offerings includ ear buds, travel case and roll-up antenna - some do not. The manual indicates these are are included although that is not always the case.

finr product for the money..
I have had this radio for about a week now..

the instruction booklet is a little skimpy and setup can be confusing, however this is a fine radio.

FM selectivity is good, and quality through earphones is excellent, on SW the SSB feature is necessary to listen to HAM radio..its just a shame its not synchronous sideband detection..you must fine tune to select USB or LSB...Other than that the sensitivity is good, my only conclusion is that its not as good as my Satellit 800, but its also 1/20 the size and < 1/2 price.

There is a nifty "time zone" feature that allows the traveller to easily select which time zone he is in..the glaring omission however is that while GMT can be set (=UTC or world time and the basis for SW radio) all time zones are simply linked directly to GMT..or put it another way, there is zero capability to deal with any summer time...you need to muck about faking a time zone for BST, EDT or whatever.. this is a silly error.

The feel of the slightly rubberized surface is excellent, as is the display lighting and three methods of tune .. a rotary know (thankfully), seek, and direct frequency input.
If you are looking for a decent portable radio with SW, packed with the necessary features for enjoyable listening and without unnecessary frills, i cannot think of a better buy.

Absolutely terrific, no frills, portable am/fm/sw receiver
Kaito/Degen has done it again! I needed a small AM/FM/SW radio for travel and have compared several including the Kaito KA11, the new Grundig G6, the older Grundig YB-550PE, the Sangean ATS-606, etc. I am still not done with all my evaluations, but I definitely think that the Ka1101 is a great small and very inexpensive ($ 55-60 depending on the vendor) and a very excellent receiver! It apparently comes in silver and gray, but mine arrived in gray from Amazon. I am extremely impressed right out of the box how well it performs even for quite weak signals and with the antenna on sw not even extended.

PROS:

1) Comes with rechargeable batteries, velcro-sealed slip case, earbuds, long antenna wire, adapter/charger and very readable manual (which fits nicely inside of the supplied Kaito KA1101 slip case!). Batteries are designed to be easily recharged inside the radio.
2) Excellent weak signal reception on ALL bands including Low frequency FM or FML (starting at 70 MHz). It really performs very well!
3) Wide/narrow tone switch (Music/news), Mono/Stereo switch as well as Local/DX switch
4) Lock switch and external antenna jack
5) Back light controlled by available ambient lighting with an on-board light sensor system
6) Numerous tuning methods available
7) Very high quality and very readable display with numerous icons for charging, battery life, Mono/stereo settings, wide/narrow filter setting, etc.
8) Very long battery life
9) Simple direct system for changing the 5 individual bands in direct order only (no reversing of the band change direction is possible).
10) Finally, it has a nice and very easy to use reset button on the front panel just in case the system acts irregularly (which I have not observed at all)

CONS: These are all very small and of no great significance whatsoever!

1) Only a total of 50 presets are available (10 on each of the 5 bands), however they are extremely easy and very intuitive to set and recall.
2) Smallish speaker (after all, I wanted the radio to be small and portable so this has to be the case!)
3) No signal strength meter available on-screen or otherwise
4) It uses 3 AA batteries instead of a pair of batteries. Also, when rechargeable AA's are used, the full battery charge will not register on the screen (only 3 of 4 of the battery indicator icons are visible under these conditions).

Very nice, full-featured portable radio
Bought this radio last month in order to listen to music and talk radio in my office. I needed something that could pick up signals through several thick interior walls, and still take to the beach and on ski trips.
When I got the radio, I was surprised at how small it is (about the size of 2 cassette tapes or decks of cards), but was pleased by the heft. Directions were a bit confusing at first, but not the worst I've seen.
AM/FM Reception is quite good. It's better than the Eton 300 I picked up at LLBean (and lost), bettern than the Jwin I bought at Walmart, and almost as good as the much, much larger Emerson MBR1 I have at home. SW reception is better than the Eton, but I haven't used that feature much. Signal doesn't seem to drift. I unplugged the radio yesterday at noon, left it on overnight, and it's still running on the same charge 20+ hours later.

All in all, this is a very good, very portable radio.

Great little radio!!
I bought this radio based on the reviews. Especially the ones saying it gets good reception. I work in an office near the middle of the building so there are no windows nearby. I was told by the IT manager not to use the internet for radio streaming. Well this radio is my God send. No radio works in my office. But this radio with its extended FM/shortwave antenna brings in the stations I wanted. Awesome!

Yet another great Eton product!
I have had no problems with reception, even in the sticks. I really like the added solar feature which compliments the crank function nicely. Mostly robust, though some of the knobs feel weak, particularly the "mode" knob. Excellent backlight for the frequency/clock LCD display, easy tuning, plenty of bands to select from, and the built-in USB charger is a GIANT bonus. I now own six quality Eton products, and this one is *easily* my favorite. A directional antenna vs. the current vertical-only telescopic antenna would have been a nice touch.

For the price this is a let down
I came back from hurricane duty and my wife had purchased this radio. It worked, but she had to buy too many batteries, as they only power the unit for 4 hours or so.

My main issue with this is that it didn't even have it's own power supply included. Hello, this is being rather petty with a two or three dollar power supply.

Gives me another reason to hate the Red Cross

RECEPTION FIX
Great overall emergency radio. Read many reviews that indicated poor reception which almost prevented me from buying. Once purchased I tried the radio and was disappointed with the poor reception. Almost seemed like it was running low on batteries even though new ones were just put in. I learned that the multi-function knob (see manual) was set on "Alert". This seems to be a low power savings mode. Once I selected any other setting including "Off" the radio's reception was excellent (the radio is turned on via a different knob / see manual). I bought it at Radio Shack since it was on sale for . Radio Shack's site forgot to add that this radio also has Short Wave which is a plus in emergencies.

WRONG ADAPTER
Great Radio... wrong adapter. Amazon links the two but if you read carefully this adapter is for the FR up to 400 series and I got it for the Solarlink FR *500*. This is a 4.5 volt adapter and the FR 500 requires a 5 volt adapter. Customer service at the "store" that shipped it to me was EXCELLENT, full refund no questions asked. Amazon screwed the pooch on this one by linking two incompatible products. (Insert Jeff Bezos laugh!) :)

Grundig M300R purchased 9/2008
I mostly listen to late night talk radio on standard AM band. This little radio works better than any other I've tried in pulling stations in and maintaining a stable signal (it rarely fades.) Haven't tried the short wave bands all that much.

I ordered the red one, wouldn't do that again, the plastic has an odd, very flat texture. Not a big deal.

Basically, it's small, cheap, works OK, I like it. Sound quality is fairly good for a small radio.

Mini Size but Huge Performance.
Grundig M300BL Mini300PE Handheld Shortwave Radio (Metallic Blue) This little radio is big on performance. You can take it backpacking and you can be sure to find something to listen to where ever you are. It fits nicely in a bicycle handle bar or seat bag. It's small enough to take anywhere and sounds great for its size. Small size, Huge Performance and Great Price.

I was disappointed
I like:
- Case like a rubber
- Great reception on short wave

I do not like:
- Knob for tuning is very sensitive and difficult to handle.
- Very large antenna
- Do not memorize the stations.
- Button of power sometimes fails.
- Reception of FM medium-quality.
- Seletividade medium quality.
- During radio listener does not show the clock

Very Good Radio
This radio has very good reception and the batteries last a reasonable length of time.

pleased as punch
good reception and tone for its size.love the color,metellic red.very easy to use. the texture makes it easy to hold and prevents dropping.the color makes it easy to find.what else could you ask for that money,don't answer that

Works Great
This product works great! Twice this summer we were alerted of tornadoes in our area and we had time to get to the basement for safety. The product is easy to use but I wish it would come with the AC adapter instead of having to order it seperately. I just bought one for my parents who just went through the hurricane in Texas and had no way to get emergency reports once the power went down.

A quirky variant on the Grundig FR-200
This is the Eton FR-300, which is actually a slightly modified variant of the Grundig FR-200. The only reason I bought the 300 is because my local Radio Shack was out of the FR-200 (aside: I wanted to get a 2nd one for my garage - the other being in the laundry room). Anyway, I decided to roll the dice and see if the it was significantly better. Unfortunately, it isn't.

THE GOOD:

* Sound quality: Although mono, it's adequate.

* Battery life: The unit uses three AA batteries, plus a small plasti-sealed NiCad pack (about the size of an olive) for the recharge crank. I've been able to run the radio for an hour or two each day, for several weeks, before having to change the AA's. {BTW, I use Tenergy 2600 miliamphr NiMHi AA's in this, and they work great}. I rarely use the crank-driven NiCad, but it's runtime is rather modest - 90 sec of cranking yeilds around 60-75 mins of listening ... at a very modest volume.

* Portability is good.

THE MEDIOCRE:

* TUNING: {minus 1 star) The pre-printed plastic frequency indicator on mine is better aligned than the one on the Grundig FR-200 I own, but it's still rather innacurate, and the tuner's performance is underwhelming - unable to tune in all but the most powerful of my local stations, and unable to prevent nearby station frequencys to bleed into each other. I'd happily have paid 2-3x as much for a comparable radio with a digital tuner and a minimal LCD readout ... which would have only a modest impact to total battery runtime.

* CHARGING: (minus 1 star) The smallish handcrank generator, although slightly better than the Grundig FR-200, is still rather clumsy to use, and having to spend 1 second out of every 45-60 cranking like a crazed chimp, charging a dinky little NiCad mini-cell, is irritating. One minor improvement over the Grundig is a round jack that allows charging of certain models of cell phones ... HOWEVER, only a small minority of phones are compatible with it, so the feature will be all but useless to the majority of people. Also, I would have liked an additional feature that'd allow you to directly charge instead the three AA's via a built-in smart charger connected to a universal power input ... thus enabling recharging (or direct play) from things like you're car's cigarette lighter, a portable generator, a PC, a portable roll-up solar pad, etc. I'm pretty sure there are newer versions of this sort of radio that have a larger & more ergonomic crank mounted to the rear, as well as solar recharge capability/compatibility. This model, as of this writing, has fallen behind the latest technology trends.

* OTHER FEATURES: Other added features over the Grundig are VHF TV reception (how obsolete), several weather channels (useful), and a small siren (why ?).

All in all, this model is just a slightly more expensive variant on the Grundig FR-200, with a few extra, but mostly useless, tweaks and additions. I found it underwhelming, and not worth the extra cost over the FR-200.

It does the job
There are already some great reviews here, so I will keep this relatively short.

Bottom line: The radio works well and does what it says it does. This being the case, I'm giving it 5 stars.

I have read and appreciate some of the more negative reviews. Some of the points made are valid while others are misinformed as some commentators have noted.

For me, all I can say is that the day after I received the radio from Amazon, our power went out for the first time in four years. Now, living in southern California, this is not what I would consider an emergency. However, the power was out for a few hours, it was late in the evening, eery, and boring. After setting up my emergency lighting, I basically got to sit around until I remembered I had this radio. I say THIS radio because, I have others, but I never use them because where I live, in the midst of canyons and hills, I have yet to find a radio that got any channels worth listening to.

Anyways, I turned it on and tuned it in and, to my surprise, I was getting virtually every channel that I listen to in my car, on this radio. That was exciting for me, not least because now I can listen to my Angel's game on the radio in the house. : )

Suffice it to say that I was pleased. As for the other features, here is my two cents.

The light works fine, but you should have other lights in your kit anyways. the strobe is probably useless, but you should have another strobe in your kit anyway. The siren may never be needed, but it works and could come in handy (not worth marking the radio down for). The alert feature combined with the weather stations is nice if you live in certain areas. The crank feature works well and does what it claims. Still, if you are stocking up on emergency supplies, stock up on batteries too. It only makes sense.

As I mentioned, the stations came in better than any other radio I have used where I live. The was truly surprising.

Very handy during Hurricane Ike and after
I'm so happy I got this before the hurricane, and it came through like a trouper. After losing power at the height of the storm (in Houston), this little baby has been our lifeline to the outside world. Great reception and lasting power. I'm buying another one for the hurricane kit.

POSITIVE REVIEW
So far, we are happy with this radio and thank goodness we haven't had to use it yet! I really appreciate that there is a button that just puts the radio on the NATIONAL EMERGENCY & WEATHER SERVICE. You don't have to rememeber what chanel it's on which would be hard to do in an emergency.

good
We live in an area where we need storm information. I'm very happy that the stations are clear and the weather information is precise.

Wouldn't travel without it!
We ordered this radio prior to our six week road trip from California to Georgia and back this late spring. We not only used it in the truck when there were no radio station signals to warn of impending weather, but also in our travel trailer at night. More than once we were alerted to a tornado warning (Texas & Louisiana) and severe weather warning (Georgia). It saved us from damage when we were alerted to a severe hailstorm and high wind warning one afternoon and got our awning down just in time, others were not as lucky. Great product!

Weather raidio
For anyone looking for a small weather radio, this is the best I have ever seen. It is smaller than a cell phone, easy to carry, has adjustable sound, and does what is advertises.

I recommend it highly for anyone looking for this type of device.

good, inexpensive weather radio
This isn't the fanciest weather radio in the world, but it is inexpensive and very portable. There is sometimes some static on the broadcast, but I'm pretty sure that is coming from the broadcast itself and not being caused by the radio, since my last weather radio sounded about the same. There are a couple things to keep in mind about the "alert" feature, if you are buying it for that.
1) It will drain your batteries while it is in the alert mode, and you won't know when you run out - so if you're looking for one to be constantly on alert mode in your home, you should look for one of the ones that plugs into the wall.
2) It isn't limited by location or type of alert, just if there is any alert being broadcast by the station it is picking up, it will go off - for instance once it gave me an alert for thunderstorms in a city 50 miles from here.

However, for my purposes this radio is perfect - I leave it completely off most of the time, but when I hear the severe weather sirens go off outside or there are really strong winds blowing things around, I turn it on and listen to the broadcast. Then if it's bad and I have to seek shelter I can carry the radio with me and know when it is safe to come out.

just another chinese made plastic radio
i ordered this after seeing an advertisement for it. i am a big am/fm radio fan and my frustrations are that that the dying medium has been reduced to cheap plastic poorly made devices. i had hoped the eton radio would be different. it is cool, does seem to work as described and the crank functions well.

the box says canada then in small print it says designed in california assembled in china... translation MADE IN CHINA just like every other crappy plastic piece of electronics you'd find at a dollar store. it feels like a chinese made device. lacks the rigidity and quality of something made in north america. nothing special about it's construction at all.

for 10 bucks i wouldn't mind but for and the glossy advertisements that wreak of integrity i had hoped for a quality american made product not just another chinese made piece of soon-to-be-broken plastic.

American Red Cross FR150 Self-Powered Radio/Flashlight/cell charger
Good things come in small packages! Small, but does everything well. The cell phone charger is a great added plus. The light is surprisingly brilliant for its size. A perfect item to have around for emergencies.

Radio, Flashlight, Phone charger
Great little radio. And I do mean little. I've put off buying a self-powered radio for my emergency kit because so many were larger than I wanted. With several ways to obtain power, a built-in flashlight, and the ability to charge my cell phone [I requested the proper tip for my phone from the manufacturer online and quickly received it for no extra charge] this device is an esxcellent addition to my kit. And I like the red color.

Eton FR150 Emergency Radio
Good product with great features. Seems to be well-constructed. Small size is easy to store in an emergency kit. Built-in LED flashlight is good for emergencies but not as bright as a 2 D-cell regular flashlight. Hand-crank recharging feature works well but cable to charge cell phone is not included. Owner must send in coupon with model number of cell phone-good luck finding the model number of your two-year-old cell phone. Reception of weather band broadcasts is not as clear as reception of AM/FM, and is not equal to other weather radios I have owned, otherwise I would rate it as 5 stars.

Great features for a sub 0.00 radio
I have been using the radio for several days and here are my obsverations.

I purchased the radio for the aircraft band as I live about 10 miles from DFW airport. I have been able to listen to the aircraft as well as the control towers. Some aircraft frequencies come in great, the towers less so. All are however listenable. There is some bleed over into the aircraft band as is to be expected but not so much as to make it annoying.

You can pick up all of the major shortwave stations with no problem. Normal AM and FM reception is fine.

I find the SSB reception to be poor at best. You can select SSB mode but not USB or LSB. Tuning is done through the use of the tuning knob. If you are looking for SSB reception, I would look for a different radio, perhaps the Eton E1 or a tabletop set, both of which will cost much more.

The sound is ok for a radio with such a small speaker. Do not expect room filling sound for such a small radio. I was surprised at how small the radio really is. This would make an excellent travel radio. There are a lot of memory presets that you can use. The stations remain set even after the batteries are removed. I removed the batteries for 6 to 10 hours and the presets remained. Most of my listening has been done using an external reel type antenna.

All in all, for the money this is a nice feature rich radio. I recomment using an external reel type antenna for best performance. It makes a big difference. The external reel antenna is not included but they can be found in many locations for less than .00.

An unbeatable value
I've owned this radio since it was first introduced and I've owned maybe 30 or 40 portable shortwave radios over the past couple of decades. I find this little unit to be a great value BUT only if you're looking for the feature set offered. Obviously if you don't care about aviation traffic or SSB, you could do a lot better for the money. BUT in my experience there aren't any better value radios out there at this price point that do it all better.

The aviation band is just so-so in terms of sensitivity and overload protection from broadcast AM but I find the SSB remarkable. SSB signals are easily found with the fast dial speed and easily tuned in to "listenable" frequencies with the slow speed setting.

The shortwave broadcast band is very sensitive and fidelity with good headphones is quite good and the FM stereo audio is excellent again through earphones. The channel separation or selectivity could be better on the shortwave bands but it's not bad unless you have two very big guns right next to each other.

All in all if you're looking for nice small portable shortwave radio that can handily receive broadcast AM shortwave, SSB, AM/FM commercial broadcasts, the G6 can be a lot of fun at a very good price point

Good Fun Radio, but you can find cheaper....
I ordered this radio looking for something that would have a little more sophistication than my Kaito KA11. I like this radio, but in my experience it received the same stations off the whip antenna that my KA11 (a radio that costs half as much) received with a piece of copper wire strung off its whip. With an external antenna, the G6 was overloaded, showing full signal on nearly every station and getting a lot of static, noise and bleeding of other bands.

The air band had the same AM bleed that other reviewers describe. When I did get airband, I thought that it was boring. Obviously that's not the radio's fault, but it ended up being a feature that I would never use. The radio also has SSB but I couldn't find anything over the entire band other than weird stretched am stations and static after a week's worth of trying. I may have been doing something wrong, but I read the instructions cover to cover and looked on the web, and other than scanning the air, what can you do?

I bought this radio for better SW reception and it has pretty good SW reception (gets the major broadcasts like BBC, Radio Havana Cuba, Radio Taiwan, CBC, UTC) without effort, just no better than the radio I already have.

If this is your first shortwave or want to give SW a try without hassling with external antennas, this would be a decent choice and you wouldn't be let down. However, Kaito's radios cost half as much, perform just as well, and include batteries and external antennas. They just have odd ergonomics and interfaces and hard to decipher instructions. I find those things a little charming. The only things that I prefer from this radio then my KA11 is the style and the jog wheel. FM and AM on this radio were very good, FM especially clear in Portland, OR.