Radios Reviews

Didn't seem to make the FM reception any better, except for the fact that when I was trying to get the classical station from NYC, to my horror, I got loud and clear, the local Christian station. Not what I wanted. The AM reception was completely gone; I went back to the antenna which came with the Onkyo tuner, which sort of works. I didn't have much luck with the "pin the dot" tuning system. More gain just made it more static-y (with more pain).
Bottom line will be an attempted return to CC; we'll see how that goes.

We purchased this two years ago for the same price and have felt ripped off ever since. I can't believe it is still on the market. It does not do what an almost $80 piece of equipment should do. It barely improves the reception. Keep shopping for a better quality antenna. There is no "Pin-Dot Pre-Tuning" with this hunk of junk.

. A good antenna is of the essence: an inexpensive radio with a good antenna will outperform an expensive radio with a poor antenna.

2. A good antenna where there's no signal won't make a difference: the antenna has to be in the path of the radio signal.

Starting with these two simple principles, you can go a long way toward improving your AM reception without having to spend a lot of money or time.

Let's take a look at the first truth of AM reception - a good antenna. Outside of a few select radios engineered with AM radio listeners in mind (such as the CCRadio plus), most radios treat AM radio like an afterthought. Many radio manufacturers have relegated AM radio to the past, to the days before FM, and they aren't fully aware of AM's continued popularity across the country. The consequence of this move away from AM is that many radios just don't have very good AM antennas. That means it's up to you to find a suitable AM antenna. More on this in a moment, first let's look at basic idea number 2.

If you're trying to listen to a radio station that doesn't broadcast in your direction, chances are very slim that you'll have much luck. Also, if you're antenna isn't directed correctly at the signal coming your way, you'll also experience diminished reception. Ideally, your antenna should be at right angles to the AM signals coming toward it. Think of it in terms of trying to hit a baseball with a bat. Even if you are a phenomenal hitter, it is difficult to hit a pitch with the narrow tip of the bat. Sure you might come close, or if your lucky, you might even make contact with the ball, but you'll never make a good solid connection needed to hit a home-run or even get a base hit. The same is true with radio signals that aren't hitting your antenna.
Now for the finer points. Choosing the right antenna requires that you get to know a bit about your specific needs. What type of building are you in? Wood frame buildings with wood siding shouldn't cause much interference. If you're inside a brick, block, stucco, aluminum, or metal-sided structure, you might get a lot of interference inside the building. The easiest way to check the amount of interference you're getting from your building is to take a portable AM radio outside. If you get good reception outside, but poorer reception inside, it most likely has something to do with the structure of the building.

One of the best ways to overcome most AM radio reception issues it to use the Justice Antenna with Twin Coil Ferrite. It's far more adjustable than ordinary AM antennas, can be fine-tuned, and can also be wired from an internal radio or stereo to a distant window that allows better reception - the antenna element can also be mounted externally to overcome even the most stubborn internal interference.
After reading this short piece does it seem like the Justice Antenna was designed specifically to address the two basics of AM Radio Reception? Well it should, at C. Crane we're proud to say that the Justice Antenna reduces nighttime AM fadeout by up to 99% - that means many more hours of clear radio listening than you'd get with an ordinary radio or radio antenna. Just remember though, even with a good antenna like the Justice Antenna, the second basic idea still holds true - if the antenna isn't in line with the signal, you will not get perfect reception.

The unit came with the antenna broken so I am sending it back to Amazon.

The sound from the ipod, a CD and radio are of poor quality, The radio sounds the best. The sound fidelity is not good despite tweaking with the controls.

Switched to Mac? Switch back.

I built an 802.11b network for the PCs in my house. I set up everything and had it working and tested for a few weeks before tackling the Airport install. Since I'm not usually a Mac user, I thought I'd make sure everything else was working first.

Well, it was the right decision. 8 months later, my Airport card still does not work. I put it in our iBook, and it's recognized, but there is an error message that locks up all the wireless applications and configuration, so the Airport is useless. Yes, I have the right OS version, and I've gotten the latest drivers and applications, but nothing works.

I'll try again, sometime, but it's just really hard to get psyched up for hours and hours of beating your head against the wall, trying to get something to work.

Hey, it might work out of the box for you. If you have an older iBook, though, I'd prepare for a struggle.

Like everything Apple makes, it was trivial to install and setup. End of story.

The real glory is being able to carry my iBook all over the house and use it everywhere. Combine that with the great battery usage in the iBook, and I am finally not tied down!

Go Mac, and do it without wires. You won't regret it for a single moment.

What a wonderful investment this Airport card (and the base station) was! I can walk anywhere in the house and even into the garden out back with my Powerbook and remain connected to the Internet. I take the computer everywhere, and at this moment (as I write from the living room while watching Discovery-Italia) my Internet connect utility tells me I have been connected to the Internet for the last 2,000+ hours! Almost three months! And that's despite taking the computer wherever I want it to go, up to 150 feet (half a football field) from the base station. It stays connected when the compuer is in sleep mode, when it restarts, turns off. There is no reduction in connection speed, I never get cut off and it effortless to operate. If I could somehow keep the battery charged without plugging it in, my Powerbook would be cableless for life!

I will give my five stars one caveat, because while the card is not difficult to install, opening the computer to do so does require an unusual and specific five-sided Allen-wrench-style tool that is not easy to find (hint: go to a store that repairs cellular phones). I am told that newer computers (mine is a Titanium Powerbook from late 2001) can be opened with a simple small screwdriver, but you'll want to look at the bottom of the computer to see if this will effect you -- do you have or can you get the tools to take that whole panel off? Perhaps an Apple dealer can do this service as well (though the card is billed as installable in the home) but here in Italy I did not have that choice. But even though I was a bit frustrated by this problem, the beauty and utility of the whole Airport technology easily makes up for it, hence the perfect score and the enthusiasm.

Another side note: the Airport works in desktop computers as well as laptops, but I'm not sure what the advantage to using it in a desktop would be, since portability of the Internet connection doesn't seem to be of any value if you can't move the computer. Yes, it would save one cable out of the back of the machine, but that hardly seems worth the price of the card and base station. And it does allow several computers to be connected to one broadband line, but the same thing can be achieved with a splitter and a few feet of extra cable that would cost less than $15. It isn't billed this way, but I really see this as hardware for laptops rather than desktops.

ATTENTION BUYERS: Use of this product within the United States requires the purchase of an $80 FCC license because this radio operates on frequencies in the General Mobile Radio Service. FALIURE TO PURCHASE A LICENSE WILL RESULT IN A FINE OF UP TO $10,000. For more information, visit www.gmrs.net.tc or wireless.fcc.gov/services/personal/generalmoblie. FRS/GMRS radios are marketed incorrectly because they are treated like regular consumer electronics. YOU MUST PURCHASE A LICENSE IN ORDER TO USE THIS UNIT. To apply for your license, visit www.fcc.gov/wtb/uls.

I recently purchased the 520 for backpacking and canoeing. I found it very easy to use, with screen navigation, track information and user interfaces being surprisingly intuitive. It took me about 10 hours of drive time, primarily to and from work, to master most of the features. The color map, while not a necessity in any manner, is also a nice feature, although I don't know if it is worth the money. I would imagine that the grayscale display would be more than adequate. The batter life is absolutely, positively phenomenal. I got close to 90 hours out of mine without a recharge. I don't know if this was typical, but it far exceeded my expectations. Although I have not used the 2-way feature on it, I expect it to be quite useful when canoeing and backpacking with multiple parties, and is one of the primary reasons I purchased the unit.

Contrary to the above poor review, the FCC and the Canadian government have granted Garmin a waiver so a license is not necessary to use it.

For the longest time, I resisted geting a GPS. Any soldier worth his stripes should be able to figure out his ground position to within 100m just by comparing the ground to his map, and maybe shooting a bearing with his compass.

But then I picked up a cheapie Garmin Etrex, and while it doesn't replace the map and terrain reading skills (by a long shot) the ability to generate an exact position fix at a moment's notice comes in very handy, especially when one is operating in an unfamilliar area. GPS may be a crutch, but it is an *effective* crutch.

There were a few small problems with the Etrex though. It was very sensitive to sky view, such that it often lost signal inside a vehicle unless it was on the dash. It didn't do mapping, and it would eat AA batteries at a ferocious rate. With the newer, fancier units on the market, I started thinking about upgrading.

Many of the troops in my unit have Rino 120 FRS/GPS units. It can be handy to have an additional means of communication other than the issue radios, and the position reporting function was interesting, so I bought a Rino 520 - specifically a 520 vice a 530 because of reports of better battery life, and the extra geegaws on the 530 didn't seem to have much practical purpose.

Wow!

1) The 520 has tons of memory, such that I could upload topo maps for every area I was likely to operate in and still have room to spare. The detail and accuracy has been outstanding, and having street names (which the issue 1:50k maps lack) has been a godsend.

2) It is much less sensitive to sky cover than the Etrex was. It'll still lose signal if (say) stuffed in a glovebox, but it'll work on your lap in a vehicle, where the Etrex would not.

3) The "breadcrumb" track mapping means I can record everywhere I go, and then download the tracks to my computer later via Mapsource - which can then be overlaid on satellite imagery via Google Earth (which has already proven useful in proving that I was at a certain place at a certain time)

4) The routing function and the turn-by-turn instructions were recently tested on a 900km road move, and worked - although the unit made a couple of odd suggestions, and I think it may have been hampered by not having detail maps loaded for the entire route.

5) It has a nifty "alarm clock" mode, where you set the alarm, and the unit shuts off - and then turns itself on and screeches at the appropriate time. Cool!

6) The data pages are customizable, meaning you can set up pages that contain just the info you need.

7) The radio and position location/transmit functions work exactly as advertised. I don't yet have a good feel for the max range of the radio (even in 5W mode) but it's not huge. The speaker gets all distorted at max volume, but when used with an earbud it is just fine. My gut tells me the radio is fair to good.

8) The only real concern I've had has been battery life and the fact that it uses a proprietary batty pack that must be recharged from wall current - which can be tough to find sometimes. But so far, battery life has been exceptional (a three day exercise with heavy radio use only dropped to 60%, and a 2-day road move with the radio turned off finished at 90% used) and an add-on pack that uses normal AA batteries (at the cost of dropping max transmit power to 2W) is availible.

Overall, this is a great unit, and highly recommended.

DG

I have been an XM subsciber for a while - with the original Delphi XM2Go set, and two other units in cars. The Helix/Inno sounded great - more visible color screen, MP3/XM/Napster integration. I want to use the unit either in the car or at home, through the FM Modulator, which I do with the old one.

Guess what - for over $200 more than my old one, the FM Modulator doesn't work - unless you spring for the "car kit" - half of which I don't need, since the car only has a CD player (so can't use cassette adapter).

It really seems to be a case of pay more, get less - and with deceptive packaging to boot. The packaging lists "FM Modulator" in the list of included features - not even an asterisk to say "with optional car kit" or something like that.

Since this was important to me before my purchase, I tested it on the display model at Best Buy - it showed the options for configuring the FM broadcast. So I bought it - but when I took my toy home, that option wasn't available. So they must be displaying it through the OPTIONAL car kit, with no indication that this isn't what you'll really get.

Beyond this frustration - the unit worked OK, would love to have a less busy screen (an option for just a plain blue background, or something like that), and the battery life was so-so.

So, it has been returned - and I'll wait for a unit that has not been stripped of features, that is worth its price.

This product (as with the Pioneer Inno) was intentionally downgraded, so that the FM transmitter will only work if you buy the car kit. Now you can't take it to your office and use with your boombox, etc. Perhaps they think they will sell more hardware this way.

However, in the days of advancing electronics we should expect better. Don't buy this product until they change it back! Don't worry, a competitor will soon improve on this situation!

Update. I bought the Helix and it is everything I imagined and more. Sure, the FM modulator has been changed, something that really angered me but after a month of use realized that I haven't even missed it. Stop complaining about it, if you can't live w/o the fm mod, don't buy this product. The reception is as good as FM in my area (Boston) and I've had no need for the car kit, the Helix pulls in a signal all by itself. I get a signal in my office which has no windows. I get a signal with it in my pocket. In fact, I've never had trouble getting a signal, it even works fairly well in the subway. I've saved and locked over 200 songs with only 16% of my memory being taken up.

I also can't overstate my experience with Samsung's customer service. It is the best I've ever dealt with by far. No, I don't work for them or know anyone who does but they don't outsource their call centers so you speak with an American who is fluent in English. I haven't experienced customer service like Samsung's in years. Their customer service is the reason I waited for the Helix rather than buy an Inno.

The Helix is also the same price as the Inno. You can find both products for much less than the $399 retail price. If you are paying more for the Helix than the Inno, you aren't doing your homework.

This is my 4th XM radio and by far the best.

Sensitivity is below par on short wave. I also own a Sony ICF-SW7600GR - a much better radio in all respects. If you want a good radio for short wave listening, buy the Sony.

I was so fascinated when saw the ad in a magazine about this
little junk. Sorry to say, but that's true in my case. Besides it's sleek & attractive design, is a piece of junk for the money. I never buy a short wave radio for FM listening, any cheap radio with a pair of earbuds will do that. I was totally disappointed with the product's shortwave performance. No more Grundig radio in my life. I even contacted Grundig headquarters
in Germany for the product's manufacturing, the pattent, etc,

they made it very clear that they all are going down the tube.
The single star I gave for the design only.

The Grundig G2000A is like the pre-TV series Anna Nicole Smith: hot looks, feels great, but not something you want to have around day in and day out.

To be sure, it's one of the nicest-looking radios you'll find, but as a shortwave receiver, it lacks a lot: doesn't tune the whole SW spectrum (why these radios just don't cover the full 1.7- 30 MHz range is beyond me) sensitivity leaves a lot to be desired, and selectivity (ability to separate closely-spaced stations) is in adequate. Plus, the audio is on the tinny side. For the $80 or so bucks you will normally pay for this, you can do much better. Probably Grundig's worst model.

For some reason, you can only order one of these.

Trying to order more then gets you "We're sorry. The above item has a limited purchase quantity. We have changed your purchase quantity to the maximum allowable."

Kind of silly, since it seems like most people would at least like two of these. Hope this gets fixed.

Ordered on 24 May and received on 29 May. Good service and prompt shipping.

Received as a gift. The unit worked somewhat for about 1-1/2 hours of careful use then one of the headsets failed. Nady promised a replacement on July 26 but did not replace the unit. Nady ignored about 5 inquiries about why the unit was not replaced. I would avoid any item made by this company.

THe Nady PMC-2X intercom system is nearly unusable....no matter how low the volume is set it picks-up the noise from the engine and cuts-out. What I've read on the internet forums is true... This is a product to avoid.

I have instructed drivers in Time Trial events with this unit, and have found it very useful. This is the lowest price I've seen.

One word of caution though -- when shutting down, don't pull the headset out of your helmet, take your helmet off with the headset in it still and plenty of slack on the wires. Pulling the headset out of your helmet tends to weaken then seperate the wires in the earpiece, and this happens quickly.

Radio works ok but with one major complaint. I cannot turn it off. The on off button does not work I need to pull the batteries out.

I bought this radio over Amazon a few days ago and it works great. It has great FM reception and although the tuning isn't digital, it's okay.

I am so happy I got this little radio. I was just looking for a little old fashioned pocket radio like we used to have in the "Old Days", but the short wave feature here really is great. I love being able to get the Catholic EWTN radio program on here. I love watching EWTN on TV, now I can listen to it on the go.
I love all of the functions this radio has,like the alarm and sleep functions. It has such fine tuning that you do have to roll the dial to set it, but that's what we always had to do years ago. This is just what I wanted. I hope it lasts a long time. It seems like a very solid little radio. It comes with earbud headphones, but sometimes you just want to listen to a radio without them. A lot of personal radios these days can only be listened to with earphones, I didn't want that restriction. Great Product.