This is an inexpensive radio / music player. They’re selling on AliExpress today for under $23 with free shipping. It’s an MW/FM/SW radio and music player. In this short First Impressions post I’ll discuss packaging, look and feel, preliminary sound quality assessment, first look at the manual, and some questions that come to mind.
Caution: My First Impressions posts are tentative and subject to change in the final review.
What it is
It’s an AM/FM/SW radio, adding an emergency siren, Bluetooth speaker, music player (supported music formats not specified) from USB-A flash drive or MicroSD card, and sleep timer alarm. The radio has auto tune storage (ATS). There is a speaker and an earphone jack. While the radio sports digital signal processing, the user experience is purely analog. There are some LEDs to indicate band and mode. The tuning display is reminiscent of a slot machine, except that the digits don’t rotate independently.
In tiny printing around the faux speaker port on the back, visible in just the right lighting, is a feature list: “R&D: DISPU — FRULL BAND — RADIO — BT — MUSIC PLAY — SUPER BASS.” Maybe “FRULL” means “not all of MW.”
Shortwave coverage is not continuous, rather divided into 7 distinct bands: bands not actually detailed in the product manual, but discernable from numbers on the tuning wheel. We can see the bands listed and in the table following are the “standard” ranges from the listed bands:
| Band | Frequency Range |
|---|---|
| 49 | 5.9 – 6.2 |
| 41 | 7.2 – 7.6 |
| 31 | 9.4 – 9.9 |
| 25 | 11.6 – 12.2 |
| 22 | 13.57 – 13.87 |
| 19 | 15.1 – 15.8 |
| 16 | 17.48 – 17.9 |
The manual also has one other curious entry:, weather band:
MW doesn’t cover the full band for US users.
The manual says the overall SW range is 5.7-17.9MHz.
The size is 10.5*4.5*11.8 cm. The antenna length is 33 cm. It uses an 18650 flat top battery and charges in place with a USB-C jack. A screwdriver is supplied to open the battery compartment.
But there is no indication of how a weather band might be accessed. I read this to say that there is none and that the manual might refer to some other model.
It is IPX4 weather resistant and is sold as an “outdoor radio.”
In the box
The box wastes no space. In it are the radio, USB charging cable, manual, battery (installed) and a screwdriver. Mine, like the few I have seen photos online had a wrinkled box, likely due to the lack of a separate shipping box.
The next photo doesn’t show the bubble wrap, but the radio in the box is so protected. The accessories are the manual and charging cable. The Manual appears to be the same one from the AliExpress seller’s website. The one sheet manual covers English, Portuguese, German, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Thai and Polish. Here’s the package all together:
Look and Feel
It’s not a premium unit. The resistance to turning the tuning knob varied according to position. But it seems sturdy enough. The controls are well placed and operation is not at all clumsy; it’s held in the left hand and operated with the right–thumb on the buttons and fingers on the tuning knob.
Right away I noticed that the tuning dial is not illuminated. Something recessed from the front panel should, in my opinion, be lighted. The box lists a feature called “ambient lighting,” but nothing in the manual talks about it.
There are attachments for a carry handle or strap but none is included.
Operation
The more serious mechanical issue is backlash. I haven’t seen this on a radio in years, but some of my old cheap radios had the problem. When tunning one might turn past a station by accident, so one turns back to listen to the station — only it’s not there. Reaching the station requires turning back further than the knob position was when the station was received. The operator ends up turning back and forth hoping to land on the station.
Perhaps a better approach, at least for FM where the backlash is particularly bad, is to run the ATS scan and then use the arrow keys to switch between stations.
The manual never says what the MW step is, whether it can be changed, nor how to change it. I’ll have to figure out some way to test that.
Can one tune a station visually? I decided to try to tune a nearby FM station, on 89.9 MHz. The first problem is that the FM band on the rotating display is in red with black printing. In normal room lighting reading the numbers is almost impossible. The tuning dial presents “88 · 90.” In the US, there are 10 FM channels in that small space — more in other regions.
Sound
The 5W speaker is loud, no question. Quickly tuning on the FM band, I found the bass less than expected. As I understand it, the music equalization profiles do not apply to radio.
Questions
How old is this thing? Typically the short MW band is an indicator of either a really old model or one that is only for the Eurasian market.
Conclusion
It did receive MW stations, and at least some SW was found with just the short telescopic antenna. I’ll give it a whirl when I have more time (this thing arrived at 9 PM tonight).