|
|
|
|
Just fine
I have had good luck with "reconditioned" stuff like this. Works fine, price is good. Radio is great, but headphone die in 6 mos I'm a gardener by trade and use my radio all day to listen to NPR. While I love this little radio and its a trooper, the headphones are not. Invariably the headphones breakdown within 6 mos. Keep in mind that I'm sweating in the summertime heavily. Occasionally a rain will come up quickly and get the radio slightly wet before I can put it up. And occasionally the cord gets nicked as I'm pruning. This is all fine and normal wear and tear, but if I could just buy replacement headphones, this set would be fantastic. Unfortunately it's almost impossible to find just the headphones. So often I end up buying a new radio just to get the headphones. Currently I have two working radios and no headphones. However, I will say that these headphones are the most comfortable of all that I have tried. The ones that hang on your ears give me a headache. The ones that set in your ears continually fall out or get pulled out. If I could just find replacement headphones regularly, I'd rate this product five stars. It's light and compfortable. It takes a beating and keeps on ticking. But rain and sweat ruin the headphones in a flash. Review of Sony walkman The radio is easy to use and has good reception. It has plenty of presets and a hold switch so that you do not accidentally change the station or turn off the radio during your activities. I have had others in the past and this is the best yet. If you want a small, easy to use radio with good sound, this is the one for you. Great am/fm/tv/weatherband pocket radio Comments for prospective buyers: 1) PLL (Phase locked loop) digitally synthesized radio with very low noise. 2) This radio can only be manually tunned by pressing the + (forward/up) or - (back/down) frequency tuning button. It will even advance semi-automatically if you hold the button down and you will hear the stations as the radio sweeps through the frequencies so you know how/where to locate stations (unlike Sangean pocket radios which mute during automatic scan and seek functions). Thus, there is no fully automatic, press and scan or even a seek function, but I have found this manual tuning capability totally adequate because of the simplicity of the five preset tuning buttons for each band (with 2 sets of five presets on the fm band). 3) It is as good as the Sangean pocket radios that I have recently tried as well (including the famous DT-200VX). It remains to be seen if the new (June 2008) Sangean DT-400W (with NOAA weather coverage and broadcast alerts) will compete with the Sony SFR-37V. 4) It has a one year limited warranty and clearly not just 90 days as listed on numerous websites, including Amazon.com. This time limit is clearly listed on the instructions with the radio (the included Sony warranty certificate comes attached to the radio instructions). 5) I get excellent reception here in the mountains of New Mexico for a super-portable am/fm/tv/weatherband radio receiver with 25 presets (5 am/10/fm/5 tv and 5 for weather) that lasts 30-54 hours on one AAA battery. Weatherband signals are weak by the nature of the short range, low power NOAA transmitters and you must turn up the volume to adequately hear them and then adjust it back down for most am/fm stations especially. 6) All presets are very intuitive and extremely easy to use (a one button press system) as well as very easy to set. They are also easy to change as needed, especially if you travel a lot. Also, as long as you change the battery within 3 minutes of removing it, no presets will be lost (fortunately changing the battery is a snap). 7) It is extremely durable and well made and should last a very long time. In fact, my son's SRF-37V was extensively chewed 3 years ago by his young puppy (whose name is his gal Friday since he first got her on a Friday) and it still works quite well! Also, the battery cover is normally hinged to the radio so that it can't be lost (unless excessive force is used when it is opened and in this case it is designed not to break, but instead to simply pop out, but can easily be reinstalled as shown in the Sony manual). It also comes with a belt clip that nicely and firmly attaches to the radio for convenience. It also has a lock switch to keep all settings unchanged (except for the volume control) with an LCD screen indicator for the locked position as well as a battery level indicator, etc. 8) When using it inside a building go as close to the windows/doors as you can to get the very best reception. Radio waves do not penetrate very thick structures well so the best reception should generally be found outdoors for hiking, jogging, just plain walking, etc. 9) As others have stated you probably will want a better set of earphones to fully enjoy listening on all bands, but the supplied pair is certainly adequate for most purposes. 10) For those like me who will use this device near a computer, some degree of RF (radio frequency) interference (static on both the am and fm bands) can be expected. The RF interference is substantially reduced the further you move away from the computer or if you hold the radio in your hand or if you can extend the headphone cord fully. This Sony is my personal update for an old analog Sony radio (the SRF-19W am/fm stereo radio Walkman) from the late 1980's that is still working (also with no speaker and with a DX RF (radio frequency) gain switch even way back then)! The best radio Walkman you can buy I just bought my second version of this product after seven years of constant and quality service from my first radio, which finally gave out only two weeks ago not from any kind of shock, but a mysterious problem with the AM antenna I couldn't fix no matter what I tried. But for a Walkman in my experience, seven years is a long time. Considering what's happened as far as portable audio since 2001, that I'm still using this product is a small miracle. I have an iPhone and an iPod, and I no longer have a need for the heft of a tape player or any need for a CD player. Yet I still carry this around, because; ·I still listen to AM radio all the time and I still enjoy the thrill of tuning in a station from Denver, Boston, Richmond, or Halifax on the shores of Lake Michigan. No iPod product can currently tune in AM radio and it would take an engineering miracle to create one for the iPhone. Better that I do it with a radio like this than some bulky $40 model or a $5 cheapo unit. ·I have the iPod's Radio Remote, but the range seems to be limited most of the time to forty miles. I haven't been able to find the sweet spot for listening to FM radio clearly from Green Bay or Milwaukee on the iPod. This Walkman doesn't have that problem and recieves all the signals as clearly as possible. ·It's nice (well, until next year when the FCC tells everyone to 'shut down that analog signal') to be able to listen to a TV show or breaking news if you don't have a TV near you. Sometimes my local radio station no matter what won't interuppt their regular programming to bring us news coverage, so to be able to have an alternative to them is always nice. ·Weather radio is the feature I now look for in any radio I buy. They don't have it, I don't buy it. Sony was way ahead of the curve years back adding NOAA Weather Radio to most of their Walkman radios, and though there's no alert availability this radio has kept me informed as to the weather when my cell phone hasn't worked, the commercial radio station's news department is asleep, or I'm in a situation where the information is critical. ·The size has to be the biggest factor when it comes to why I bought this. Portable radios usually are larger than iPods (especially if they have a cassette player), and I can't have so many devices in my pockets. This radio is light and easy to carry, and the belt clip actually clips. ·The other Walkmans I used in the past had all these complicated bass boosts and signal filtering options that really, I never used because all they did was muffle the sound. This doesn't have any of that, the signals come in clearly, and the volume goes up to a nice level where 60% is enough to hear a station well. A good radio like this should play well and not need any embellishments, and it does it well. My only quibble is that there's only five AM presets, but I understand that. If you're an AM listener or just want a dependable portable radio, you want to buy this one, because there's no equal to it. RDS would be nice also, but for now not many stations have it, so for now it's fine. | |
