Grundig FR200 Emergency Radio by Eton
|
Our Price: $99.95 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Speakers See more digital camera details and other models |
|---|
Digital camera reviews of Grundig FR200 Emergency Radio
Digital camera Review: Excellent radio, good sound, clear reception
Summary: 5 Stars
I got this for my birthday, having selected it based on other reviews. It is exactly what I wanted and lives up to its name and reputation. We have a cottage in a remote area but the FM reception was great and the sound quality was very good for a small speaker. It was fun listening to the SW bands, picking up stations from around the world.Overall, a great radio at a super low price.
Digital camera Review: Exceptional Value
Summary: 4 Stars
I hold an amateur radio radio license and have other "higher end" equiptment. However, I am becoming more fond of monitoring of late and despite what some say being that this is an emergency only radio, I disagree. I would use it with batteries which, by the way it has unbelievable battery life on 3 AAs. It just makes sense not to place excess wear on the crank charger. It recieves AM (MW) broadcasts well as does it FM and shortwave.The dual tuning (fast and fine) is handy. The only thing missing for the price is SSB ability. Plug in a walkman type earphone set and it sounds even better. Along w/ the emergency light, I would recommend the little radio to anyone to keep on hand or to use anytime.Digital camera Review: Exceptional Value
Summary: 4 Stars
I hold an amateur radio radio license and have other "higher end" equiptment. However, I am becoming more fond of monitoring of late and despite what some say being that this is an emergency only radio, I disagree. I would use it with batteries which, by the way it has unbelievable battery life on 3 AAs. It just makes sense not to place excess wear on the crank charger. It recieves AM (MW) broadcasts well as does it FM and shortwave.The dual tuning (fast and fine) is handy. The only thing missing for the price is SSB ability. Plug in a walkman type earphone set and it sounds even better. Along w/ the emergency light, I would recommend the little radio to anyone to keep on hand or to use anytime.Digital camera Review: Exceptional Value
Summary: 4 Stars
I hold an amateur radio radio license and have other "higher end" equiptment. However, I am becoming more fond of monitoring of late and despite what some say being that this is an emergency only radio, I disagree. I would use it with batteries which, by the way it has unbelievable battery life on 3 AAs. It just makes sense not to place excess wear on the crank charger. It recieves AM (MW) broadcasts well as does it FM and shortwave.The dual tuning (fast and fine) is handy. The only thing missing for the price is SSB ability. Plug in a walkman type earphone set and it sounds even better. Along w/ the emergency light, I would recommend the little radio to anyone to keep on hand or to use anytime.Digital camera Review: Flawed Shortwave & FM but overall a very useful product
Summary: 3 Stars
On newsgroups and message boards, this handy and compact little radio is being touted as a good choice for beginning shortwave listeners: but I would disagree. As usual for the current line of low-end Grundig products, the "single conversion" intermediate frequency design has resulted in serious image problems: in other words, you pick up a single strong station at two, or sometimes three, places on the dial: in the correct location at the intended frequency, plus one or two spurious images above and below it. In the crowded shortwave bands, this makes listening extremely difficult, as the images cause wobbling whistles and lots of interference (and make it hard to even know WHERE the radio is tuned.) In addition, the planetary tuning mechanism has really dreadful backlash: to tune in a shortwave station, you have to go past it, then back up and tune around until you *finally* get it centered. Then, the radio drifts and a few minutes later you are forced to do it all over again: maddening.AM (called mediumwave in Europe and much of the world) is more satisfying as the stations are not crowded together as much as shortwave, and the band is shorter so there is more spread from one end to the other: the tuning isn't nearly as critical. Selectivity is pretty good, and sensitivity is excellent. I have not noticed image problems that are as troublesome as in the SW bands.
FM reception was disappointing; selectivity seems poor, and sensitivity rather low. Stations "mush" together -- if they can be picked up at all. Expect only the strongest signals in your reception area.
The generator system works very well though a trio of new AA cells gives more output and slightly better sensitivity.
I tried six units and found that performance varied slightly. One brand new radio had a weak set of batteries that would not charge correctly; another had extremely tinny sound that lacked fullness (surprising to me but probably due to a poor speaker or bad audio capacitor.) A couple of the sets weren't as sensitive as others. So quality control apparently varies somewhat.
The unit I purchased is very satisfactory as a simple emergency and/or AM broadcast receiver, though not much useful for FM or shortwave. But it sounds a bit better than pocket sets, and definitely outperforms most of them in terms of AM sensitivity. (I am a retired broadcast station chief engineer in the SF bay area, with fifty years experience as a shortwave listener.)