Radio Reviews

I'm tired of replacing my boomboxes monthly (I do house renovations and always ruin my boxes with plaster and sawdust) so I gave the Wilson a shot.

It's a great design, with the whole sha-bang safe from dust and harm inside it's own gasket-sealed toolbox. The switches and controls are tougher than I thought they would be, too. All in all, it's well-enough made and designed.

EXCEPT for the sound! It sounds so bad, compared to other boom-boxes I've owned. The speakers are at the sides of the box, facing away from each other, and the sound is the worse for it, with all the bass phase cancelled out. And, injury to insult, it doesn't get very loud. I couldn't live with such crummy sound, so had to send it back.

This product got my attention when I first saw it at Sharper Image. You won't find it there anymore, probably because it was too expensive. The Jeep Boombox is pretty neat. It has what a usual boombox has, except it's shaped like a box that you can close, which is what really convinced me to buy it.

Pros:

Shaped Like a box for convenience

Has CD Storage of 6 CDs

Can be bought in 3 different colors

Is affordably priced

Cons:

It's very heavy

Takes a lot of batteries (if you even want to take it anywhere)

This boombox is AWESOME!!!!!! It plays CD, cassetes, and even the radio! It also has an extra spot to store CDs! If you need a new boombox, one that's easy to carry around, I wounldn't recommend anything but this boombox!!!! And you can even get it in colors, instead of boring ol' black or silver!!!

This alarm does its job; however its a job to get it to do so. There is a total of fourteen dials and buttons, with a total of twenty different functions, some of which must be used in tandem. ( a pain! ) The names on the buttons are printed sooooo small they are very difficult to read - lite gray on a black background. To this reviewer simpler is usually better; try another alarm clock.

THE GOOD - got this as a present from my mom as a college student. it never fails to make me up and hit the snooze! and the BEST feature is are the double alarms you can set to either wake up to the buzz or radio. the radio tuner and volume dials are on one side, while the alarm switches are on the other side - both easy to access and learn. has a 9-volt backup battery source in the back u can use.

THE BAD - the buttons on the front are a bit hard to press and hold down when setting the time/alarm, but you get used to it. the LED light is a bit too bright even on the lowest setting...that's only a nitpick since i like the room black as night. it is not small, but about 7" wide, 5" high, 3" deep - a good size to handle with though, i dont clocks that are too small.

OVERALL - worth the 20$!

The Zenith Z124B Dual Alarm Clock Radio is a good buy. I've had it now for two years and haven't seen any problems with it. The best thing about it is that it's small and can fit just about anywhere. You can set the alarm to where it'll wake you up by a buzzer or the radio. It's not confusing to learn how to set the alarm, change the time, or anything. And you can also set the volume on how loud you want the alarm to be. There's also a switch that allows you to set how bright the digital time appears.

If you're looking for a good clock radio that is worth the price, I recommend getting this one.

I got a Jensen SRS Jam Pac for Father's day, which includes the Sirius receiver and a car installation kit. I love the Sirius service, so I purchased the Audiovox boom box to let me take my Sirius subscription to new locations (yes, the Jensen receiver is compatible with the Audiovox....both are made by the same company).

I give this product only 3 stars, since the sound quality is MUCH lower than I expected. No bass or treble adjustments, and the sound lacks any serious bass. Given the price and the fact that you are essentially just buying a "shell" (receiver is required, and purchased seperately), I really expected much better sound quality. First, I thought perhaps it was just a poor signal from the satellite, but my high quality headphones verified that the receiver is capable of good quality sound.

The Audiovox boom box still seems to make the most sense for me, since I could not find any other boom box or portable solutions for my receiver. I did not buy the "home dock", since the boom box has a headphone jack and I simply hook up an RCA cord from the boombox to my home stereo system when I want more robust sound.

If you own a Sirius receiver, this unit is still a more flexible choice than purchasing the home dock. I just wish they could have improved the sound of the speakers....

This is the only product I could find that is portable. I wanted something that I could use at home and work. The boombox is small enough to throw in a large backpack, and has an AUX port that you can use your MP3 player. It also has a headphone jack, which comes in handy at times.

The boombox comes with the boombox unit (not the receiver), power cord, and a small "stand-up" antenna. The antenna has a relatively long cord, which is good if you need to move the antenna a long distance from the boombox. The sound quality of the boombox is average. It doesn't have a lot of bass, which is a good thing if you plan on using this in an office environment.

The Sirius service and channel lineup is great, but I do have a problem with the reception. I live in an apartment building near an airport, which gives me dropped signals constantly. I also have problems if it's very cloudy or it's raining outside. If you have poor cell phone reception where you'll be using the radio, you probably will have issues with dropped signals. Other than that, I love the service.

These radios sound great - they are clear and crisp and the battery life is great. I also like the way the lock feature works and the fact that you can select high/low power at the touch of a button.

However, I bought a set of two of these, and at one point or another, both of them have refused to turn off. Turn the knob to the off position, it clicks to off, but the radio stays on. One of them works pretty well, only exhibiting this behavior occasionally, but the other one never turns off. Put the batteries in, it's on until they die (luckily that's a long time with these radios).

Secondly, they don't handle cold weather well at all.
Try this: Take one snowboarding, but leave it turned off. After about an hour or two of boarding you'll feel a vibration in your pocket. Yes, the thing has turned itself on, kicked itself into vibrate mode and started vibrating. But there's no display on the LCD! It still thinks it's turned off.

So Cobra, if you are listening, getting the thing to turn off shouldn't be a big technical challenge for you - engineers have been very successfully designing devices that turn off going all the way back to the invention of the light bulb.

See other relevant reviews under the item "Cobra GMRS Two-Way Radio Pair (PR 950-2 DX)." (Unlike the pair, this product has NiMH batteries and a charger.) I agree with those reviews, which basically say that these radios have great sound quality and range. Just a few more points for people who are trying to decide whether to buy one:

SIZE: About the same size as the competitors. Without the antenna and belt clip, it's 11 cm high, 6.5 cm wide, and 2.5 cm thick. (That's about 4-1/2 inches x 2-1/2" x 1".) The antenna adds another 6.5 cm (2-1/2") to the height on one side, and the convenient off/on/volume knob 1 cm (1/2") to the other. One unit weighs about 180 grams (6 ounces) with the batteries.

SCANNING: The PR950 has 22 channels: 7 FRS (Family Radio Service, channels 8-14), 8 GMRS (General Mobile Radio Service, channels 15-22), and 7 FRS/GMRS (channels 1-7). It has CTCSS (Continuous Tone Controlled Squelch System) with 38 codes per channel. Unfortunately, it can scan only the main channels, the codes within one channel, or the up-to-ten codes in its memory. For example, let's say that someone is transmitting on channel 6, code 17; your scan would be able to find that channel 6 is active, but then you have to do a second scan to determine that code 17 is the one being used. I find simultaneous channel-and-code scanning easier to use. Also, it takes five presses of the "mode" button to start scanning; I would have preferred a separate button.

BATTERY LIFE: In the manual, is given as 24 hours in a "1:1:18 ratio" (I think that means that it is tested when transmitting 5%, receiving 5%, and doing neither 90% of the time). That's a pretty long battery life compared with the competition. The selectable high/low (2 or 0.5 watt) power output on GMRS channels helps save the batteries.

OTHER NOTES: The LCD display has a lot of information, such as signal strength meter, whether power saver is on, etc. A button on the side toggles the backlight and also toggles the monitor-a-single-channel feature (called "Maximum Range Extender"). The wrist strap attaches to the bottom of the PR 950. There are speaker and microphone jacks at the top and a charger jack on the side; all three jacks have rubber covers. The 10 outgoing call tones are useful; when people call you, you can choose to be alerted by call tone, by vibration, or both. The voice activation (VOX) mode with five sensitivity settings worked fine for hands-free transmissions. The end-of-transmission tones or "roger beep" can be turned on or off. You can turn off the keystroke tones and can lock the Channel, Mode, and Enter buttons.

CONCLUSION: Buy this excellent 2-way radio at Amazon.com!

For an FRS unit, it is not bad. My only problem with this unit is that you have no channel lock. If you accidentally bump the channel changer, you will not hear anyone trying to contact you.

I bought these because I was splitting the package with one of my friends. when we tried them, since we don't use them at very far diatances, they worked great! where I live, there are a lot of buildings and trees, so for the distances we use them for, it is great! one of my other friends got the ones that has a charger and batteries for him and his brother, and the distance between us, they work with minimal to intermediate static, so they are fine. so, basically,they are the best to me.

A TALE OF THREE ENTERTAINMENT CENTERS.

THE FIRST Crosley Entertainment Center that I owned was defective or damaged in shipping. The turntable speeds were all slower than they were supposed to be. It was impossible to play a 33 record at any speed. In addition, the turntable was crooked and off balance. The unit made sounds (clicks and static) when music was not playing. AM reception was okay,but FM reception was full of static.

THE SECOND ONE: I then looked at a friend's Crosley. It played records, tapes and cassettes, and the sound was all right. Unfortunately, the FM reception was poor.

THE THIRD ONE: The replacement Entertainer that I received had the same problems with FM reception but played all the media adequately.

The style of this item is very attractive, especially the wood cabinet. It looks wonderful. Unfortunately, it needs an amplified indoor FM antenna ($14.00 - 60.00). However, it lacks a coaxial connector that would allow you to connect the Crosley to an indoor FM antenna. The audio components (CD drawer, controls, tone arm, speed level, turntable, cassette drawer) function but seem cheaply made. The tone arm looks as though it will break if used by a teenager or adult who is unfamiliar with record players.

In summary, I really like the appearance of the Crosley. A negative is that it needs an FM antenna, but, as I am told, it cannot be connected to one. It also needs owners that will treat it gently. It does look very attractive! If the Entertainer cost $ 100 or less, I would recommend it with these reservations.

I bought this record player a little more than a year ago and it has been great. It has worked on every record I put in it and always came out clear. I was surprised by the quality and give it five stars.

When you buy this little radio, you will definitely get your money's worth. Although it does not have the best reception, it is nonetheless a decent product. It is ideal for trips to the park, golf course, or your backyard. It's very small so you can tuck it away without being bogged down. If you are a shopping for high quality, then you may want to look elsewhere. However, if you need some dependable protable tunes it's not a bad little radio.

This is a neat little mini radio...we have it our bathroom to listen to while taking a shower. It was worth the price. :)

I bought two of these - for each of my kids bedrooms. It is nice and compact with the clock and the cd player -- perfect for their bedside music. The problem is they don't keep time correctly -- every time there is a power outage (and they go on the back up battery) both start to run ahead (they seem to pick up 10 minutes every few months). One of them is now not playing the cd without hitting the button five times and turning it on and off a few times. It also sometimes starts playing music in the middle of the night on its own.

I was here looking to replace with the Sony (figured it was better quality) and was surprised to see another review liking this one and having problems with the Sony....

Actually ended up buying two of these, one for both floors of the house. We had to replace our less than a year old Sony's as they had both broke, one had the CD parts fall off and the other keep time from another universe. Yes I did take them back to the dealer and was told to send them to Sony. It was easier and in this case cheaper to buy new units. Easy to use and so far very reliable. I do like the CD track option for wake ups, really is special on those special celebration days for the significant other. I bought one GPX at a local retailer and the second from Amazon. Great product.....

This product has many defects and bugs in it. My friend had the same product and she said her sound was not working. I went over and her speakers were turned off, so I turned them on and it worked. She said even when the speakers were turned on, the sound for the tv didn't work. I thought she was crazy. A few days later, I installed this product on my computer, and frequently the sound did not work. I had to restart my computer. Also, if you leave the volume on the tv or radio on high, and then turn the tv or radio off, the speakers make many noieses. You have too open the program, and turn the volume all the volume all the way down for the squeeky noise to go away. And then finally, just two days ago, the sound stopped working completely. I could here some noise from the radio but with squeeky noise, but the tv was just making a whole bunch of noises. Now I finally knew what my friend was talking about. This tv tuner has many bugs. I recommend not buying it. I have a Gateway computer with Windows XP, 1.9 GHz, 40 Gig hard drive and 512 MB of ram. All of the windows security updates are installed inlcluding Service Pack 1. I recommend choosing a Tv tuner other than Hauppauge. But let me add just a few pros. When the radio and tv did seem to work fine, the FM radio was excellent. very sharp sound. It doesn't come with an AM tuner. The tv was pretty good too especially when you want to record a program. It saves it too a special folder where you just click on the program saved, and it plays it using real player. However, recording programs REQUIRES AN EXTREME AMOUNT OF DISK SPACE. I recorded the PISTONS basketball game vs. the lakers and it took almost 3 gigs off my hard drive.

But like I said, save yourself time and money and don't buy it.

I have a 2.4 Ghz Computer with 512 MB Ram running Win XP pro. Installing the device was really easy and took probably no more than 10 minutes. The Radio works and TV is pretty good, but the only problem is trying to close down the program WinTV2000 or WinTV32 after watching TV for an extended period of time. Has a tendency of not wanting to close itself down and then crashes Windows when I keep trying to get it to close. Going to keep it though since it's way better than the USB TV Tuner from pinnacle. Maybe Hauppauge will release a patch for this problem later on. Besides the software glitch, it's really not that bad.

This watch tells time. That is it. It syncs itself from an atomic clock timeserver, so it keeps very accurate time.

There are other watches that do more with the same time sync capability. You may want to look at one of those first.

The watch has no back lighting. The band is not the greatest either.

Timex and Casio both make radio controlled watches. Investigate those first.

It is not a bad watch, but it is not outstanding either.

This is a good basic watch. It does exactly what it's supposed to, which is keep perfectly accurate time via radio sync with atomic clocks near Denver, Colorado. Keep in mind that the further you are from Denver the harder it is to get good radio reception. My watch syncs fine in Kansas City, MO. It was able to sync about once a week when I lived in Washington, DC. It's very cheap looking and basic. It has no backlight, stopwatch, or alarm. The watch casing is plastic and the band in steel painted black. After a while the paint on my band came off in few areas, which doesn't look nice. It is also relatively power hungry for a watch. You will have to replace the batter about every two years.