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 ... Read More
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.
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 ... Read More
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.
