There seems to be an influx of newer and even more powerful battery emergency radios on the market. This Sttfaishen S10 had a 20% off coupon with a final price of $31.99 on Amazon for a 20000 mAh battery charger, plus a Bluetooth speaker, shortwave radio and NOAA Weather Alert radio. It checks all the boxes.
Sttfaishen S10 – Amazon Product Photo
I like the color (it also comes in orange), but the Amazon product listing shows two different green colors, the one above that I like and a darker green with black accents that’s less attractive. I hope the speaker is decent.
This one definitely has the NOAA Alerts:
Amazon Product Photo
Shortwave coverage is limited to 2.3 – 23 MHz, but that’s par for the course with these radios, and shortwave is not essential in an emergency scenario.
What I found intriguing was this bit from the listing title: 15W Fast Charge. With a fast charger, this radio is going to charge twice as fast as usual! The product description suggests it also charges other devices faster.
The product listing does not have a weather resistant rating included.
While necessarily heavier than the Axyebi MD-107 because of the considerably greater battery capacity, it is amazingly small, only 3 x 4 x 2 inches, or 24 cubic inches, compared to the Axyebi at over 75 cu in.
The other thing
Wait a minute! I thought you just bought an emergency radio. Yes, I did. Someone will have the opportunity to get a great deal at the local Goodwill store. Nothing at all wrong with that radio. This one will I think suits me better.
Did anybody see what I did there in the title, “Weather Alert! Radio Arrives” instead of “Weather Alert Radio Arrives”? That’s because despite the Amazon product description having this text buried deep down, “NOAA weather alert radio,” this is no more a NOAA weather alert radio than a regular broadcast receiver tuned to a station that has weather reports. When the NOAA test tone goes off tomorrow, this radio won’t be listening for it.
Kudos to Amazon for getting the radio to me 2 days earlier than projected, and in the morning no less. $25.99 on sale with free Prime shipping. Note that AB-US-107Y in the product listing has changed to MD-107 on the package and in the manual. There is no brand on the box or manual, but “Axyebi” appears on a warranty sticker on the bottom of the radio and the Amazon product description.
Axyebi MD-107 Emergency Weather Radio
First I noticed that opening the box required moving a tab labeled OPEN. It’s a small thing, but thoughtful to point out the tab. Right out of the box we have a bubble-wrapped radio, manual, USB-A to USB-C charging cable. The wrist strap and compass were pre-installed. The radio is formidable, 1 lb., 3.1 oz. with a size of 6.5 x 3.3 x 3.5 inches. And now to disclose the answer to the burning question: how long is the antenna? It measures 21 inches. Compare that to 10″ for my Mesqool CR-1009 Pro, 11.5″ on my iRONSNOW IR-688 or 16.5″ for the XHDATA D-608WB.
Something really bugs me about the Amazon Product Name:
Exactly what does “48100mWh” have to do with anything? The difference between this number and the also quoted 13000mAh is the difference between Watts and Amps. The radio is rated at 13000mAh (milliamp hours). That’s current flow over time, not energy, and it’s the way batteries are sold. To get Watts, one has to multiply by voltage, meaning that the company has multiplied 13000 by 3.7 (the voltage of the battery) to get the larger, technically correct value.
Look how a buyer might be mislead with these other products:
mAh or mWh — you can’t compare
Ease of Use and Documentation
The radio seems intuitive to operate, but I first glanced at 10 small folded up pages of information. The instructions seem complete, well-written and nicely illustrated. I give the manual Grade A! While the radio is rated IPX4 (heavy rain, but not immersion), the manual says the device should not be exposed to “dripping or splashing.” The obvious points of entry for water are the speaker grill and back battery door.
The manual suggests cranking the radio for one minute at 130 RPM before first use (I guess under the assumption that the radio has been sitting in a warehouse for a long time.) Whew, that was vigorous activity! I noticed that the orange charge light came on while cranking. The manual says one minute of cranking powers 6 minutes of radio.
So let’s turn it on!
Hmm, not the initial impression I hoped for.
Charging
I tried the flashlight and got only the dimmest glimmer of light, pointing to the battery perhaps being discharged. (Recall that I cranked for a minute already.) I plugged in the charging cable, powered by a 2.1A USB port on a power strip, in series with a USB tester. The radio charged at 5.04V, 0.16A. That’s not good. I would have expected 1.5A at least. The charging light is on, and all 4 battery status lights are flashing in sequence, suggesting that the battery indeed is at its lowest state.
It’s probably worth trying another charger (or two). I got the same result. Plugged into the charger, the radio will turn on and it was initially tuned for my local NOAA weather station. So 0.16A at 5V is a charging rate of 0.75W, which would result in a charging time of 40 hours. BUT WAIT. As I was typing this, the charging rate vaulted to 4.95V at 1.5A or 7.4A. Now that gets me all charged up in just 4 hours. Of course one should expect the charging rate to slow down as the battery fills. The Amazon product says 9 hours for a full charge.
MD-107 Charging at 7376 mA
There are 4 battery indicator lights, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. When I started charging they turned on in sequence, starting with all of them off. Now maybe 15 minutes later, the 25% light stays on and the other 3 flash in sequence.
There is something important that’s come out this exercise. In my prior experience charging radios, USB-C power distribution (PD) chargers would not work (these are advance chargers with USB-C output. Check out my article: Charging Radios – USB-C. One of of the PD chargers that couldn’t be used was my Bscane portable charger, along with my car and an Apple 20W charger. The Bscane did work with a USB-C cable (both ends) on this radio. I tested the car and it worked too, although only at a rate of .7A. (My iRONSNOW IR-688 will not work with power distribution chargers.) So the MD-107 is the only radio I have that works with a USB PD charger with a double-ended USB-C cable.
After all that running around testing chargers, checking some other radios and updating another article, the MD-107 now has the 50% light on solid, and the radio works fine unplugged.
Update: After 6 hours of charging, the radio is working on the last 25%. The charging rate hasn’t fallen.
I tend to skip over crank and solar charging. Product literature always tries to lower expectations. Reviews say don’t bother. The crank on this one takes some work to operate, suggesting that it’s doing something. The solar panel looks to be about 108 x 37 mm, or 40 cm2. It’s a little bigger than my other emergency radios, and perhaps enough, placed in a window, to keep the battery topped off.
Operation
Emergency stuff
The reading light is under the solar panel on top of the radio and (while not my favorite design) automatically turns on when opened. It seems adequate. The flashlight is point focused and very bright at that point. Enough light is cast to the side to make it reasonable to use this flashlight for walking in the dark. I’m pleased with the flashlight.
There is a compass attached to the carrying strap. When using the compass, position the strap the farthest possible distance from the radio to prevent false readings due to the magnetic speaker in the radio.
The SOS siren was about average for emergency radios.
Radio
I tried accessing NOAA weather stations. My local KZZ28 was received well, as it is with all my weather band radios. The very best radios can sometimes get two others under the best of conditions. The MD-107 barely received a second station, which puts it above average. I’ll have to wait for warmer weather to attempt those best conditions outdoors.
Weather is important, but not the only kind of emergency communications. For broader information, broadcast radio is needed. A very hasty band scan picked up about 30 FM stations and I would presume taking the radio outdoors and tuning very carefully (stations are very close together on the dial) would increase that number by a few. I think a final test would yield average to slightly below average results; however, it gets plenty of stations and that’s what is necessary. The tuning dial is fairly small to cover 100 potential FM station frequencies, so getting an exact count will be pushing things.
I live in a weak MW station area. This has proven to be a problem for all my previous emergency radios. The MW scenario is a local disaster that wipes out all the local radio stations, leaving distant evening MW reception as the only way to get news. Indoors around noon with the radio pointed in just one direction, I picked up 5 MW stations and frankly that’s pretty good for a non-hobbyist MW radio. In the evening a radio like this would be amply supplied with more distant stations.
Conclusion
For a budget emergency radio, the Axyebi MD-107 is a good one. It will likely become my “daily driver” in the genre, replacing the IR-688 that I never liked. For under $50, one contender, which is a better radio, is the XHDATA D-608WB, but XHDATA weather radios in general give false alerts, and the D-608WB doesn’t have that much energy storage. Of course this radio gives no alerts, but that’s a problematic feature for a battery powered radio anyway.
One can pay a lot for an emergency radio. One can pay extra for shortwave coverage. One can get more sensitive radios. I think this one is fine for what I need.
So now to examine the question: how does the ATS25 Max Decoder compare with other portable radios on shortwave?
The rules are simple. An MLA-30+ amplified loop antenna will be connected to an A/B switch, which will in turn be connected to two radios. First you’ll hear the ATS25 Max Decoder and then you’ll hear another radio. I’ll try to keep the volume level the same. The recording will be made with an iPhone 13.
I live in central Virginia just about 400 miles from Toronto, Canada. One of my favorite testing stations is the commercial station CFRX whose mission is to broadcast to northern Canadian territories with little radio coverage. Time stations are good at various times of the day as well, WWV and CHU.
The Setup
On the left is a BSCANE battery supply powering the MLA-30+ Biasing Tee that feeds a SONY ANS-34 Antenna / Video Tape Recorder switch (from a time when that made sense). The switch then feeds directly to the two radios, in this case a Qodosen DX-286 and of course the ATS25 upper right.
Here’s the wiring:
Testing is simple. Just pick a radio, flip a switch and make sure the other radio is muted. Take a video.
The Validity of the Test
This is all done in an unscientific way. It just shows results with one type of antenna. It’s done at different times of the day and different frequencies. Shortwave conditions change from moment to moment. And one big issue is ambient noise from the electronics in my house. Your reception may vary. I should do this at a secluded spot, but it’s freezing outside.
This fellow popped up on Amazon, on sale for $25.99. It’s not my usual sweet spot for a radio with its analog tuning dial and no shortwave, but I have come to the conclusion that those two features aren’t important to me in an emergency radio. It’s set to arrive January 23.
AXYEBI AB-US-107Y Emergency Weather Radio
The AXYEBI AB-US-107Y has the standard feature complement one expects in the genre:
MW/FM reception
Weather band
NOAA Weather Alerts
Charging crank
Solar charging
Reading light
Flashlight
Emergency Alarm
Ability to charge other things
It adds a compass.
What stands out is the stated 13000 mAh battery capacity. One of the significant issues with weather alert radios is that they take considerable power just sitting there waiting for the alert, so a big hulking battery means more alert time. The product description says one can listen to radio for 90 hours on the internal battery. It can also run off 3 AAA batteries in a pinch.
To carry that much power, the radio can’t be small, and it isn’t at 6.5 x 3.3 x 3.5 inches.
Here’s the battery:
The other extra value is that it’s IPX4 weather resistant. That’s not submersible, but protected in a heavy rain. I had one nice weather radio destroyed by a light rain.
The Amazon product description describes it as “Upgraded” for 2024, specifically a larger battery, a longer antenna (length not specified) and louder SOS siren.
Every weather radio I have tried receives the local weather station easily and I’m confident this one will too. They generally fall apart on MW, but we shall see.
I may keep this one in the car. I currently use an iRONSNOW IR-688 as my emergency radio, but it’s pain to tune and it’s almost useless on MW. This one looks extremely intuitive to operate.
Normally I wouldn’t be concerned that a radio is a couple of years old, or even 10 years old in case of the Tecsun PL-880, but these ATS radios seem to become obsolete overnight. If I had known better, I would have bought the Decoder II variant particularly because of its low noise amplifier.
My ATS25 Max Decoder — Voyage of Discovery (updated) article left a list of things to try out. And while I’m posting a 2025 review of a 2023 radio, it’s good that I was able to update the firmware to Ver. 4.2 Beta from June 8 of 2024.
This article continues the voyage of discovery and provides initial testing results.
I’m getting the impression that this is a tinkerers radio designed for ham radio operators primarily. (Update: the developer said in a video exactly that.)
All sorts of interesting stops appeared along the way, even a firmware upgrade!
I’m interested in this radio for a few reasons. It’s a very different form factor from what I’m used to. It has a metal box and coaxial antenna input that might make it more immune to local noise. It has a waterfall display, and finally it can decode some transmissions (FT4 and FT8) I have no access to.
My ATS25 Max Decoder arrived from AliExpress one day early at a time when snow has everything backed up ( extra points for that). The store, POTOLAB, seems to be out of the shortwave radio receiver business this week, and looking for other sources finds that the price has dropped $20.
The first impressions are based on version 4.17 Beta of the firmware. In my next article, this gets updated to version 4.2 AIR Beta.
Warning
I also found something one has to watch out for at AliExpress, misleading product descriptions. I found what was described as an ATS25 Max Decoder for $37.47 with free shipping, but the product photo was of the cheaper ATS20. The buyer will likely get ripped off.
Unboxing
Feel free to leave a comment if you think unboxing photos are a waste of time. I have my own doubts.
