Incoming Radio: Sansui F50

Just hours after saying I wasn’t going to buy another radio, I bought another radio. I almost hesitate calling this a radio because most of the real estate is devoted to playing media. I frankly don’t understand how someone can manufacture a media player with a 4.3″ diagonal high definition screen plus an AM/MW/SW radio and ship it from China to the US for under $40.

Some of the controls on the device are in Chinese and the manual is in Chinese. Thanks to Fred in the Shed, I have some quick start instructions in English, enough to get the menu system to switch from Chinese to English.

I don’t know if MW is going to be stuck at 9 kHz channel spacing. The seller on Banggood says it can be changed, but their wording suggests that they are guessing. Fred says FM has hiss all the time. Shortwave is from 2.3 to 22 MHz, which will cover enough frequencies to be interesting. It has ATS on all bands.

If this gets into daily use, it will likely be used for watching YouTube videos offline. One odd bit is that it is powered by 3x 18650 1200 mAh batteries. That’s a lot of batteries. I’ll likely replace them with much larger capacity cells, again, if it gets into daily use.

Anticipated receipt March 25, 2025, from AliExpress. Also available at a higher price from Banggood.

Update:

The AliExpress seller (Outdoor Fashion Speaker -z13 Shop Store) responded to my query about a PDF version of the manual. I was hoping for a Chinese version that I could run through some sort of automated translation process. Instead they sent a manual for a similar model (MR-50) in English. I think it’s the same as the F50.

I’ve taken the manual and rewritten it (with the help of Microsoft Copilot), and I added instructions for changing the menu language. Following is my draft user manual.

Sansui Model MR-50 User Manual

Faithful readers may have done a double take, noting that this article said F51 in the past rather than F50. I made a mistake.