Hot Electronic Gadgets

Preppy Jock says:

I have heard enough about HD radio, so I saved enough gift certificates, and finally bought this “new” “digital” radio.

when I opened the package from amazon.com. I ordered a white one, but the package box is for the walnut color. i thought that i got lucky, because it costs a little extra for the walnut color. but inside, it is still the white radio. When I turned on the radio, all five preset buttons have already been set to my local radio stations. So obviously, amazon sent me a used radio even though it looks new from outside. and i paid the price for a new radio. there is probably an amazon center close by where i live, that is why somehow all those 5 preset radio stations are all in my local area.

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If you are thinking about buying a HD radio, don’t buy this one. I did my search several times on amazon with different keywords to find what products they have. This one has “digital” in the name, somehow, I thought that it is a HD radio. After all, it costs just as much as a HD radio. It is not. The first thing that I noticed was the usual statics from AM radio stations. I was surprised by that. Then I tried to find a way to tune to those FM sub-stations, I can’t find a way to do it. I got to the Sangean’s web site, and called them. They told me that this radio is not a HD radio.

so I immediately packed the radio, and sent it back to amazon via UPS.

This unit only has one speaker, even though the FM sound quality is pretty good, but you can buy a pretty good radio with CD player or tape player in one unit for less than $100. And the sound quality might even be better.

And if you really want a good tabletop radio, just add 20 or 30 dollars more, buy yourself a HD radio, from what I read, the sound quality will be far more better. and you can get many more FM stations, too.

Therefore, I rate this radio a 3, it is just too expensive for a plain radio.
Rating: 3 / 5

Eric says:

Just took it out of the box and plugged it in and — what do you know — it worked!

My first remark upon opening the box was AH — no, not the single word, but the two separate words beginning with the letters ‘A’ (for the first word) and ‘H’ for the second word (just in case children are reading this).

Certainly the people who packaged this thing for Amazon, somewhere in Kentucky, must have been real AH’s. Why? Well you know those plastic air filled pillows which are included in order to cushion the contents during shipping? They were present there in the box alright, only they’d never been inflated… Flat as a sheet of writing paper, they’d simply been thrown in to satidfy some set of instructions issued verbally since the people who did the job were unable to read the instructions on the flat ‘pillows’ which said “INFLATE THIS”. The product had plenty of free space in order to slide back and forth inside the shipping box and must have made noises like ‘CLUNK!’ ‘BANG!’ all during it’s trip from Kentucky to Colorado. The USPS shipping box looked as though it had grown very old in the process.

Fortunately the manufacturer’s people had carefully packed the product at the factory, perhaps fearing a beheading if they did not do so (the factory is somewhere in China) while the people in Kentucky couldn’t have cared less.

The radio is a beautiful thing; the metal bezel is a testament to good design, as is the wooden veneered cabinet… Too bad that the two of them don’t quite line up.

Everything else works though and so I’m going to give this product five stars. It is a survivor of the first rank!
Rating: 5 / 5