Blog or Die!

The radio arrived today from eBay seller Hisonic, costing me a paltry $19.99 plus tax. Here’s the stock photo again:

To tell the truth, I was contemplating sending it back as defective. Nothing worked. The radio came on and the buttons beeped when I pressed them, but nothing happened. I finally got “Radio” on the menu, but the SW, MW, FM buttons did nothing. It kept freezing up. I really thought I had a badly defective radio.

Second Impressions

I was wrong. The radio isn’t defective; it’s buggy and weird. I was prepared for some of the weirdness based on my experience with the Degen DE28 and the Kaito KA29, contemporary menu-driven radios from the same manufacturer. One important concept is delay. There is a delay sometimes between when you hit a button and when the radio responds to the button. This can result in the radio getting behind. You can hold down the tuning slider for a little and release — the radio will keep tuning until it catches up. Sometimes, the button just doesn’t work and it requires multiple presses. Sometimes it starts tuning in the opposite direction from the button pressed. It can be frustrating to use.