RetekessV115 Shortwave Radio, Digital Radio AM FM, Shortwave Receiver with 1000mAh Rechargeable Battery, Presets, TF/AUX Playback and Recording, Bass Speaker, for Camping

This is probably the best radio I've found under $25. It is packed with features including AM mw/sw and FM reception, mp3 and wav player, mp3 recorder that can record from the built-in mic, the radio or the line-in jack, and it also can be used as a USB sound box and MicroSD card reader in both a computer and a compatible phone.First of all, the speaker in this thing gets surprisingly loud, and although not booming, the bass response is quite good for its size. It really is impressive for something so small it can fit into a pocket. Distortion can of course occur when the volume is set too high, but it does get pretty loud before that happens.Radio reception is surprisingly good for such a small and inexpensive device. I couldn't figure out a way to tune the radio manually up or down a step, but being able to enter the frequency by number far outweighs that minor inconvenience, and the lack of stepping is only really an inconvenience for the rather large shortwave band. It also doesn't receive any shortwave signals below 4.75MHz or above 21.85MHz, but that range covers most broadcast stations that can be received in the States, with the exception of the stuff that can sometimes be heard in the 3MHz to 4MHz range and the lower frequency ham radio band, which is mostly unreceivable from a radio such as this, as it doesn't receive single side band signals. I do have a rather long wire reel antenna that came with an old radio that I no longer have, and I find that plugging this into the aux/line-in jack can greatly improve shortwave reception, and even can affect FM reception to a point as well.The mp3 player is equally impressive, allowing dialing up the song I want to hear, which although this involves memorizing the numbers, still allows for faster playback of exactly what I want to hear than navigating a large folder with only back and forward buttons, although this type of navigation is also possible. I like even better that my music is separated from any recordings I make, and I can toggle between my music and my recordings by holding in the 0 button for about a second.The recorder has 3 quality settings, 64Kb/s 22.05KHz, 96Kb/s 44.1KHz and 128Kb/s 44.1KHz, all mp3 format. Recording from radio and aux is fairly good quality. Mic recording also sounds fairly good, except that the audomatic level control is a bit too quick, so it is rather audible. I successfully recorded a phone call on my computer using only this record function, a headphone cable with inline mic and loopback software to send my voice through the line to the recorder. In this mode, the level control isn't as audible. That said, the mic recording is really quite good when the background noise level is high. It actually sounds better in a moderately noisy setting than it does in a quiet environment. Still, this is another impressive feature given the price of the unit overall.I am pleasantly surprised by the sound card functionality in this little thing. I first plugged it into the USB port on my computer, then I tried it in my phone using a USB-A to USB-C adapter. Although the radio does not record when plugged into USB, the computer and phone can use its mic and speaker to record and playback just like a sound card. Both recording and playback rival many built-in laptop mics and speakers, with the only exception being that it doesn't have stereo speakers. Still, I enjoy having this functionality available, especially within this price range and with all the other features packed into this little bitty box.Battery life is very good for a small and loud system like this. It's not using the usual AA or AAA batteries, but instead uses a rechargeable BL-5C lithium battery, the kind some Nokia phones used about 15 years back. This battery is quite easy to find, and I opted to purchase a 1500mAH replacement to use instead of the 1000mAH battery that ships with the radio. I seem to get about 8 to 10 hours continuous sound out of the original battery, and nearly 15 hours from the replacement I purchased. I also use an external charger most of the time, although I don't have any problems using the included USB cable; the external charger just charges the battery in about half the time, although there is an advantage to charging via the USB cable while playing either the radio or the mp3 player. It will also charge while connected to my computer, which is another benefit of using the cable.Probably the biggest problen I've had with this is the headphone jack. First, others have mentioned the sound quality using headphones, and yes, it definitely does leave a lot to be desired. Somehow I don't notice the sound quality issue when I connect it to a bluetooth transmitter and use my high-end bluetooth headphones with it, but for a direct connection, it doesn't sound that great. I'm not sure what makes the bluetooth transmitter work better; I only mention it because it is the one way I found to work around the rather poor sound from the headphone jack. Also, I don't know if maybe I have a slightly defective unit, but on mine, the left and right channels are swapped in the headphone jack, so sounds that should play on the left side are heard on the right side, and sounds that should play on the right side are heard on the left side. For some people this may not be so noticeable, but I tend to notice things like this, and they bug me for some reason. Recordings from the radio do seem to come out with the channels correct, so this is not at all a deal breaker, since it could just be a defect in the specific unit I have, and since I mostly use the internal speaker, it doesn't stop me from enjoying my tunes or my casual shortwave listening.One of the best things about this radio is the fact that the buttons are very solid and stable. It's not easy to bump something and cause undesired effects, and a lock is also available just in case. These click buttons cause one drawback in recording, since they make a clicking sound when pausing or stopping a mic recording, but this is definitely tolerable when considering that buttons like these will not break down easily over time. I had another radio that I purchased at a lower price and had less features, and I thought the knob it had for step tuning was pretty nice, right up until the time it broke off inside of the thing. Fortunately, these buttons don't look like they're going anywhere, and the lack of a knob like this is actually more of a pro than a con.Did I mention this thing is a beast? I have had this for nearly two years, and I take it out and about quite a bit. It has some battle scars from run-ins with pavement a time or two, but it still works, maybe better now even than it did when I purchased it two years ago.Overall, I highly recommend this radio/recorder/mp3 player/USB and line-in speaker. Nothing in this price range can touch it. Maybe it's not for the radio enthusiast, and it does have some issues, but it's quite good and feature-packed for anyone who is as price/value-conscious as myself. Definitely still a 5 out of 5 despite its little bugs.

Love this little radio! Great size. Easy to use. The sound is very good for the size. Controls are easy to use. AM/FM reception is great. We haven't used the SW yet because we haven't had that need and really wanted it for AM/FM and its digital tuning feature.The only complaint we have is the function for input of radio stations on both bands. The auto input feature finds almost every station in an area and some that are only near an area. To us that is useless. The manual input is not really useful as it does not seem to work according to directions. That almost makes us want to give it only 4 stars but the radio itself is so neat, so clear, good and solid sound that it really deserves 5 stars.We had an old radio of similar size that had the typical analog tuning which made it difficult to switch stations. This little digital beauty doesn't do that. Charging is easy too.

Finally a good pocket size AM and FM radio with an MP3/WMA file music player built in. If you listen to music or talk radio, this solves the age old problem that there isn't always something on the radio you want to hear; with this, then you just instantly switch to your SD-card music with one touch of the "Mode" button, and then you can check back to the radio any time by pressing the FM/AM button, and when switching back again to the SD card, it goes right back to exactly where you left the song; they did that right!Another thing they did right is put in a good quality little speaker with a rear passive radiator, so this is by far the best sounding pocket-size radio I've ever had, and I have had several pretty good ones, Sony/Sangean/C-Crane. I can actually enjoy listening to music on this tiny mono speaker, and I'm an audiophile! It's almost unbelievable; I'm listening to it laying on my desk as I write this; of course only at very low volume, but that's sometimes a good thing, because many radios/speakers only sound good when you turn them up, and that often annoys other people.It's AM and FM radio reception is very good, on par with the best ones, again Sony/Sangean/C-Crane.It uses a standard battery used in cell-phones BL-5B or BL-5C, so you can buy more, including a separate charger, so you can even have a spare one charged and ready to swap in at any time. Note that the others mentioned use standard AA batteries, so they can do that too, but the lithium-ion has more power for it's size and weight. I hope it doesn't loose the presets, it takes so long to set, when the battery is swapped; some brands do, and some at least allow some time to swap the battery before loosing the presets, like one allows 15 seconds.It has lots of good information on the screen in both radio and SD-card modes. I don't see any "Stereo" indicator on the FM screen, but that's no big deal.Now for the less-than perfect aspects...As other reviews mention, the directions for setting the station presets, other than the auto-scan, are so confusing I'm not sure I can understand it well enough to even try, so all I have done so far is to use the auto-scan, which found over 30 stations, many of which are noisy or no sound at all, and then I used the Delete function to delete all the ones I didn't want, which was most of them, and now my two favorite FM stations are at preset number 6 and 28, instead of 1 and 2. Maybe I'll figure out how to set them to 1 and 2 later.Update: I learned how to set the presets, and it's not as complicated as it looks when reading the procedure, because in the written procedure there is lots of extra language describing how to first tune in a station, and then lots of extra language telling you what you will see when you press the buttons, but in reality it only takes 4 button presses to set a 1-digit preset, and 5 button presses to set a 2-digit preset, and once you memorize the very intuitive buttons to press, it's not bad at all. Once you are tuned to a station, press and hold Memo(5) for two seconds, then enter the desired preset number, then press Play two times; that's it.Another serious improvement is really needed; when using the SD-card player, this has the capability to navigate though the files and folders on your SD-card to select the track you want to play, but in order to navigate to find the next track you want to play, it stops playing the current song!? It's not obvious how to do the navigation, so I'll explain here: While in the SD-card mode, which when you select that mode will resume whatever song you were playing the last time you were in that mode, so far, so good. To get to the list of tracks, you have to press and hold the Play/Pause button to get to a menu, and the first item in the menu is "Root", supposedly meaning the root directory of the card, and then you have to press Play/Pause again to select that menu item, and that's when it stops playing the current song. Even though it stops playing the current song, it now shows a list of songs in the now-playing folder, and the current song that was playing is highlighted, so the only thing wrong is it should not have stopped playing it. Now you can move up and down the list of tracks in the currently selected folder, and if you want to play one of those, you can by pressing Play/Pause. If instead you want to go up to the folder menu, press and Hold the Play/Pause button. Great, it's not in the manual, but I discovered that works, then you can select any folder and then whatever song you want to play. If they do an upgrade that keeps playing the current song while doing file navigation to find the next song to play, I'll buy another one just for that. At only $25 this thing is a real deal.A serious mistake is using a soft power button instead of a true On/Off slider, which means this thing is never really off, and that's why they tell you to remove the battery if it's not used for a long time. Come on, let us really turn it off to save the battery!!! That's really serious for pocket radio, in case you want to keep it just for emergencies, only to find the battery dead, because it didn't turn fully off. Maybe they did that because maybe they store the presets in RAM instead of Flash memory, so maybe turning it completely off will make it loose the presets, and if that's why, come one guys, put some flash memory in it, or save a preset file on the SD card if adding some built-in flash is too difficult. Fix the imperfections, and you could charge 2x, 3x, even 4x the price, because you will have true excellence.If they think people want to keep it powered to keep time, I don't even know if it can, because I don't care about that at all. If that's why, you can keep the soft power button, and tell people to use that button when you want to keep the clock running, but use the added On/Off slider to turn it completely off when not using it for a long time.A minor imperfection is they tell you to charge it longer, even after the charge indicator shows full, and if you turn it on radio, it can then still show not fully charged, but turn it off and connect the power cable, and it shows fully charged, so I don't even know if it is charging. I ordered a separate charger and extra BL-5C battery, so I am ignoring that problem. I just hope I don't have to set up all the presets again when I swap in a new battery.So, this radio/SD-card-player comes very close to being super excellent. If they make the Station Presets easier to set, allow the current song to keep playing during file/folder navigation on the SD-card player, store the presets in Flash memory, and put in a true On/Off slider switch, this would really be super-excellent!!