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3 Years & Still Going Strong
I received this (in brown) as a Christmas gift for weather emergencies; three years later it's still working great, with impressive radio life from minimal cranking. I live in a tornado-prone area and was delighted to receive this as a gift from my brother and sister-in-law. The radio reception is excellent in my area (South Central Wisconsin) and I easily get 45 minutes to an hour of reception with less than 60 seconds of cranking. It also holds a charge for long periods of inactivity -- I turned it on after 6 months of no use and immediately received a perfectly acceptable signal on our local NPR station, even without additional cranking. A few months ago for "Earth Hour" I was fiddling with it on a lark to see if it really received shortwave. China Radio International and Radio Havana both came in quite well -- the same quality as I get on my Sony ICF-33W and Grundig YB400, when those radios are operated on battery power without an external antenna. I don't know that I'd buy this for shortwave radio specifically, but I was pleased nonetheless. We will probably upgrade in order to receive the TV bands, which are not available with this model. The reason for this is that our "local" radio stations don't carry much weather info during tornado warnings so we really need access to the TV bands -- although I'm not sure if they'll still work when the stations go digital in 2009. Overall this radio has exceeded my expectations and proved durable and long-lasting. Highly recommended. Grundig FR200 Emergency Radio Yellow Great buy! Great Product! I am familiar with Grundig products, and I am pleased with my Grundigh radio. A good choice for local emergency reception I've owned this radio for two years now, as my desk radio at work. I decided to run an experiment, and only power it with the crank. I've cranked this radio every day for the last two years. After about a year, one of the dynamo gears lost a tooth. A call to Eton got me a replacement dynamo set under warranty. I installed it myself (which is not a job for the faint of heart, but is within the skill of anyone who's handy with a screwdriver). The new dynamo and gears lasted through the recent breakage of the winding arm (which was not replaced with the new dynamo), which has relegated it to alkaline power. Of course, now the radio's well out of warranty, so I don't expect any free replacement parts. However, that's pretty good. In an emergency situation, it's unlikely you'll crank the dynamo even 1/50th as much as I did, and it held up quite well. I'd typically crank for 30-45 seconds, and get about the same number of minutes at low volume. Increasing the volume markedly shortens runtime. Reception is fine, although I've only played with shortwave a little bit. There's no way a radio like this can make a good shortwave receiver, so that feature is a bit silly. It would still be potentially handy in an emergency, when a lot of local interference goes away. For local FM reception, it does quite well. I haven't really tried AM, so I can't comment there. The little LED flashlight would be handy in an emergency, especially the fact that it can be recharged by cranking. More important would be one of the higher-spec Eton crank radios such as the FR250, which include cellphone chargers -- SMS messaging is an important communication method in many emergencies. I heartily recommend this radio for emergency use, particularly given the robustness of the dynamo system. Has Several Significant Flaws While I am a fan of Etón portables -- not least because they frequently turn up at tiny fractions of their MSRPs -- I found the FR200 pretty disappointing for several significant reasons that are overlooked by most reviewers here. First, it is not a true dynamo radio like the Baygen, but a battery-powered radio recharged by a dynamo. This would not be as significant an issue if there were not potential problems with battery longevity. There is no AC adapter included and the use of a generic adapter of the appropriate voltage but higher amperage apparently will result in over-charging and damaging the battery, according to the supplied documentation. The Etón AC adapter (only optionally available) is very low-current unit. The life of the battery pack is also limited by the number of charging cycles, so one may not use this unit routinely as a daily radio with the crank without reducing the life of the batteries for subsequent emergency use. The FR200 FAQ on the EtonCorp site somewhat evasively addresses this: "The rechargeable battery/dynamo-crank system is best used purely for emergency use, but it's not explained well in the owner's manual...When the emergency use factor is understood, this product is excellent for that purpose." So, as supplied, the only way this product should be routinely used is with the normal AA battery option. The shortwave analog tuner is adequate at best, but will get strong signals if they are available, which they generally are not in most daytime hours in some seasons. Users who are not experienced with shortwave listening are usually shocked by the difficulty with which audible signals are typically obtained. Shortwave, usually dismissed as an obsolete technology, is often critical in disasters -- I was in a major earthquake in the US years ago and for many hours the only accurate information locally available was from the BBC on shortwave. More expensive Etón SW portables come with a retractable longwire antenna, something that can be approximated with the FR200 simply by clipping a very long wire to the telescoping antenna. The emergency crank seems relatively sturdy, but was broken on the display model where I purchased mine, so caution is advised. Etón portables are coated with a thin, rubbery goo for non-slip handling, but this tends to wear off fairly quickly, giving a somewhat mangy appearance. The mechanical analog tuning is, as always on a small portable, imprecise and approximate -- especially with shortwave. The fine-tuning knob helps this situation a bit. The AM/FM sound quality is quite pleasant and much richer than one would expect from a unit of this type. Assembly, fit and alignment are crude compared to other Etón products, but are adequate. An additional oddity is that the included cloth case has magnetic snaps, so be cautious in placing these next to credit cards or other critical magnetic media. Perfect Backup Radio Hopefully we never will need to depend on this radio, but in case we do it will be ready and works well in all our testing. | |
