SangeanDT-400W Weather Alert Pocket Radio, AM/FM, Yellow

EDIT: With use my positive impressions have only strengthened. In particular the AM performance is impressive, and user interface is simple, logical, and easily operated by feel even in the dark. The controls feel solid. However, AM is dying for many reasons. Among them the rise of RF soup generated by nearly every gadget and computer (not to mention AM talk format poisoning the public discourse with highly partisan dishonesty). Unfortunately no radio can fix either of those. Fortunately, the FM works pretty well, too. :)I have owned and used a lot of radios, AM, FM, shortwave, and two-way, over the last 40 years. This one has some great qualities.From the point of view of AM tuner performance in a pocket-sized radio, this model has little or no serious competition. From just south of San Francisco, CA, in the middle of the night, I was able to tune 850 KOA Denver, 670 KBOI, 1160 KSL SLC (with a powerful local next door on 1170 Khz) 1000 KOMO Seattle, 600 KOGO San Diego, 640 KFI Los Angeles, no problems. 1040 WHO Des Moines very rough and weak indoors, a little better outdoors. Pretty much something on every frequency at night. 1530 KFBK Sacramento comes in even in the daytime. Of course, very careful rotation of the receiver (either flat or stood up) through 360 to get peak signal is a very important part of getting these weak signals, and they do fade in and out but the point is they're there and the receiver's good enough to pick them up, and separate them from their neighboring signals, which puts this in a class of "good to excellent".None of this would be particularly exceptional if we weren't talking about a small pocket-sized radio with digital tuning. The only competition I can think of is Sony's SRF-59, and both of those I've owned have detuned and stopped working adequately. Time will tell how this one holds up over time.FM stereo sound is excellent with good earbuds. Clean, crisp, impactful. The supplied earbuds were disappointing. I use NuForce NE-600s with excellent results. The "DBB" feature seems like a gimmick to me, grossly exaggerating bass. It sounds great with that feature turned "off".I would rate the FM sensitivity as "quite good" but not surprising. There are a few stations that won't switch to stereo unless I fiddle with the headphone cord orientation, that come in more easily in stereo with some of my best FM radios. However, to Sangean's credit, I think they set the threshold to switch to stereo pretty high so you almost don't need the supplied mono/stereo switching option. If it's in stereo, the signal's probably clean enough.I get three NOAA stations at my location, two with perfect reception quality.A built-in speaker in such a tiny pocket radio is unsurprisingly limited in both frequency range and volume output. However, I think of it as an extremely useful feature for listening to NOAA weather-casts, NPR, news (but I repeat myself), or sports. Or just to fall asleep to chatter. So I'm going to say overall I'm really glad this radio has a speaker and it works great for bedside listening.Feature-wise, I really like the way the BAND button works: One press selects AM by frequency (520 to 1710 Khz) with UP/DOWN buttons, the next FM by frequency (87.5 to 108.0 Mhz) with UP/DOWN buttons, and the last is a 19 preset "carousel" of your pre-set favorites, which have no restrictions on whether they're AM or FM, and can be set up in any order. I really like that feature.The "Memo" button can be pressed to activate the amber backlight for a few seconds, to see the time or frequency, which is handy.In fact, this radio may be one of the easiest to use in the dark of any I've had the pleasure of owning.The 90 minute sleep feature is fine with me. It's easily defeated by holding the POWER button down a couple seconds. Then the radio will stay on until the batteries run down. Overall I find it useful, but it may not be to everyone's taste to have to occasionally have it shut off during extended listening sessions.I'm going to give this radio a solid "A" grade. There are certainly better radios, but not too many that fit in your pocket or travel bag so easily. Next time I travel to the other coast this one is coming along to log some east coast AM stations I've never been able to hear. Half the fun is doing that with simple handheld equipment, while out on a walk. :)

Decided to submit a review since mine died last month which if it had made it to June it would've been 15 years 😊. My only complaint was that it could not stand upright because of the round bottom. Other than that it was great 👍🏾

I am very happy so far with this radio. The reception is quite good, display is crisp and clear and it feels durable enough. The buttons have a nice feedback. I love the yellow and black tones.It took a few minutes to work out how to save presets, but most of the operations are fairly straightforward.Comparing it to cc pocket, I found a few differences:1. The deep base boost is good, even though it's a subtle difference.2. Fm reception with the antenna was better, slightly more clearer. However, without the antenna, the cc pocket fm reception was better - this doesn't matter since one would mostly be using the wire antenna anyway.3. This thing simply doesn't stand straight. You need to keep it lying down or attach it to belt. Cc pocket stood straight on my desk just fine.4. Lots of button presses to get to different presets. Cc pocket nails this feature with its paged presets.5. No 1khz stepping for am. Only 9/10khz stepping - not an issue if you are not scanning for far off stations.6. Default 90 min turn off, unless you long press the power button. Cc pocket allows you to configure these things easily.7. Volume knob is nicer. I don't prefer the continuous knob of the new cc pocket.8. No alarm functionality - would have been nicer.Overall a great little pocket radio, it is slightly cheaper than cc pocket. If you want more features, go for cc pocket, if you want a simpler radio, which is good enough for most use cases and fm, go for this.

So I have had a problem. When I go to football games or when I am at work, i have poor reception. I have bought multiple radios, digital and analog, over the past 3-4 years searching for a product that would fit the bill, and nothing came up. I wanted something that was portable, Battery replaceable (not rechargeable internal) that had AM capability, digital tuner, and the ability to lock the device buttons to not be accidentally pressed. I found many items from 9-29 dollars that fit all but the button lock and tried all of them. While some were nice, some were crap as you would expect, the reception on all of them was just plain incapable of good enough reception for my needs. I figured since I exhausted the cheap market, id start looking more expensive. I went on Google and then eventually several different AI chats to ask for the best for my needs. Grok eventually came up with a list of 10 possible canditates. I went down each one...one by one, with prices from 40-200 and eventually settled on this one and its non weather band brother (same, black, no weather channel, slightly cheaper). I opted for this one because i could eventually use it as an emergency radio in the case of emergencies.After it arrived, i could clearly say the reception was way above the rest I tried. Finally i was able to take it to work and to the football games.....and its perfection. While true audiophiles would disagree with the term "perfection" for my needs, i couldnt have asked for a better product. The only way it could be better is if it was color matched to my school colors. (for football reasons). If i was overly critical i could say that the belt clip itself wasnt big enough, but lets face it, none of them are.for the price point, it wasn't "cheap" but it does hit that quality metric making the price worth it.