Kaito Electronics Inc. KA1102BLK Digital AM/FM/SW World Receiver with SSB by Kaito Electronics Inc.
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List Price: Our Price: $69.99 You Save: $9.96 (10%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $44.98 (click here) Category: CE See more digital camera details and other models |
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Digital camera reviews of Kaito Electronics Inc. KA1102BLK Digital AM/FM/SW World Receiver with SSB
Digital camera Review: Good price but poor reception (may have got a lemon)
Summary: 1 Stars
I got this radio at a good price for my dad who is a an avid shortwave listener. It arrived when the sellers said it would. Unfortunately when we unpacked the radio we found that the (pull-out) antenna was slightly bent and the FM reception was barely acceptable at best (and that too for the strong stations like NPR). SW reception was close to non-existant. A lot of playing around with the tuning (both the auto scan & the manual one with the fine tuner) only produced static hiss for the most part. The only station that we barely received (here in the NE USA) was what we thought may have been a station from Mexico. I was surprised by this whole experience because I had read a lot of good reviews for this radio and really expected it to be a good buy for me too. It makes me think that I may have got a "lemon" or the radio (the reviews not withstanding) is really not that good. One thing that I can say for sure is that the user manual that comes with the radio is also not very good. It is unclear in places and in others it seems to be written for countries with 220V AC power when the radio is being packaged for and sold in the USA. That says something about the attention to detail and quality of the product. I returned it for Grundig G4000A which has been much better so far.Digital camera Review: Good quality at low price, size and weight
Summary: 4 Stars
I own an old Panasonic RF45 Shortwave radio and a Icom ICR10. The Panasonic reached his lifetime, and the Icom is a very expensive toy to carry it from one to another place. I look for this radio at many Internet reviews and I decided to buy it. In general lines, the're four viewpoint to qualify this radio: 1) Coverage 2) Reception 3) Selectivity and 4) Sound clarity and quality. 1) Coverage: In FM start from 70 Mhz to 108 Mhz. In SW start from 2.996 Mhz to 29.995 Mhz and in MW from 520 to 1710 Khz. The reception is good to very good, In FM and AM mode there's no problem with telescopic and ferrite antenna. In SW the supplied wire antenna helps to tune weak and far stations, but it's better with a dipole cupper wire antenna 'V' inverted type with coaxial RG58 cable. Selectivity: good to very good, but in some frecuencies the filters doesn't works too fine, for ex: you can hear the noise of near FM Station in some SW frecuencies. Sound clarity: at this point I rate this radio with 5 (or excellent) altough his small size speaker, you can hear at high level of volume without distort the sound. And with the supplied earphone you can hear FM Stereo with option of bass function to amplify the low frecuency sound (a matter of taste). Cons: The volume control is via Keypad, personally I prefer the knob style. The battery life: This radio comes with 3 AA NiMh 1300 mAH rechargable battery, it provide aprox 7 to 8 hour of running. My old RFB45 (with a larger speaker) reach aprox 16 to 20 hours of running time with 4 AA NiCd 700 mAH battery. The SSB mode is available only in P9 mode, that's means that you have 9 memory areas (P1 to P9) with 19 channels each and only in P9 memory area is available the SSB mode, if you are in SW band in P1 and press the SSB button for ex, an error msg blinks on the display. In general a good buy for the price, and good size to carry it to any place.Digital camera Review: Great
Summary: 5 Stars
This radio/receiver works great, no issues at all. Prior to the next hurricane, earthquake, financial collapse, buy this radio.Digital camera Review: Great radio but...
Summary: 4 Stars
Ok I agree all the good comments but in the first day of use the volume down button was permanently depressed (even it works well)...Digital camera Review: Great shortwave radio
Summary: 5 Stars
Well, I remember listening to shortwave radio while growing up in Eastern Europe in the early 80's and felt a little nostalgic about it, so I asked Santa to bring me one for Christmas...Well, apparently I've been a good boy as I did find Kaito Ka1102 under the Christmas tree. Initially, in my letter to Santa i mentioned that there were several good shortwave portables including Sony 7600GR, Grundig YB 400, and Kaito 1102/1103. I must admit that Santa made an excellent choice as this radio is great. At first I was amazed at the small size (a bit smaller than the post card), and was concerned about the sounds quality, but I was pleasantly surprised at how good the local Fm stations sounded with bass enabled. Other things that I like about this radio:
-backlight, lights the LCD screen including all the buttons and controls. Very handy feature if you like to listen at night (Sony 7600GR has a backlight but only for the LCD screen0.
-good quality radio, at least feels very sturdy and well built. Buttons have a nice click to it, they feel comfortable, and are just the right size.
-great sound, even better with headphones.
-built in charger will re-charge your batteries while the radio is off, but plugged in to AC adapter.
-signal strength indicator
-frequency can be manually entered or scanned using two +/- scan buttons
-comes with 3 rechargable batteries, AC adapter, travel case, external antenna, earphones.
-pretty good shortwave reception (I live in the San Joaquin valley)I am able to pull in Family radio (FL), Radio Taiwan, Voice of Russia, and some other stations from China and Japan. Too bad Radio Free Europe is not broadcasting anymore ;-)
I noticed that one of the previous reviews stated that you had to read the manual...This seemed kinda silly as in order to fully understand how the radio works and to fully appreciate its functionality you should read the manual, at least once. Also, the "page" system that this radio uses works very well. You can scan AM/FM/SW on pages 1-6 and you can save any preset. Scanning works in 10mhz on pages 1-6, and it works in 1 mhz increments on pages 7,8, and 9. SSB can only be used while on page 9....That's pretty much it.
Im very happy with it and if you are looking for a nice portable shortwave radio I would personally recommend this one. A definite winner at less than $70.00!