My favourite radio in 2023, and my choices for FM and MW listening #shortwave

all these radios that you can see here are radios that I have used through the year 2023 many of them I bought this year only I really spent a bit of money this year on new radios but I feel I've reached Now sort of my limit I think I've got mostly what I need there might be a couple more radios that I might be looking into in the future but generally speaking I feel very satisfied with what I have so this video is a discussion of of my favorite radio for the year I know that's a tall order to choose only one from all these radios but that's what I will do in this video I'm going to talk about FM radios I'm going to talk about medium wave radios but mostly the focus will be on shortwave radios so maybe this might be helpful for you if you are thinking of buying a new radio I am not an FM dxer but I do of course listen to FM radio uh mostly in the car to be honest but I do enjoy some shows at home also on FM so FM for me is all about Clarity and that means that speaker quality is important so out of all these radios that I showed you there are five that I prefer to use for FM let me just say at this point I am going to discuss radios separately for what they are which one is based on FM which one is based on medium wave which one is based on shortwave all in my opinion of course other people might have completely different opinions but then at the end I'm still going to select one from all these radios that I think that serves me the best if I had to choose only one radio out of all these radios which one would it be that is what I will get to right at the end of this video but for FM the Ean Elite traveler this one lovely radio this is a a very good radio I got it actually during the co time this was my first shortwave radio when I returned to shortwave listening which was during the co time I actually neglected this radio a bit over the years this year I rediscovered it and it is very good also on shortwave but for FM this is lovely because what is nice about this little e traveler 3 is the sound this little speaker it's got nice Basse it's quite clear there's no adjustment so you cannot adjust the tone or anything but it's got clear good quality sound the next one in line would be the xh data d109 for the same reason this radio it's also very very sensitive on FM it picks up quite distant signals it is a radio with a very nice speaker it's got nice deep sound so for FM listening this is also one that I can recommend and that I do use sometimes for FM listening nice about this one is the Bluetooth streaming so I do also use that to listen to music because sometimes I stream music from the internet so this one is very handy for that and I enjoy the sound that comes from this one then when I'm traveling this one is a real favorite on FM and also another bands which I will get to but this little xh data d219 it's got also a little bit of a deeper sound it's not so tiny than some of these small portable radios some people say the sound is a bit muffled uh for me it's okay I actually enjoy the sound that comes from this one it's a kind of sound that you can listen to for a while if you're in a hotel room somewhere and you need some music in the background this one does it for me it it works well so this is a favorite for when I'm traveling for FM but then we get to the big boys and obviously these radios are in a completely different class this is the Panasonic RFD 30bt Bluetooth you can also do Bluetooth streaming on this one plus it has dib plus which I do use because di plus is in a test phase in South Africa but for FM this one is also nice it's got a very very big antenna and the sound quality is good it's very they Market this radio as crystal clear and I think it's a little bit too Crystal Clear um it sounds you know almost like a like a CD sound is a little bit too digital almost to my mind so it's very very clear but I would not say uh smooth if you want to call it that Pleasant enough to listen to for a while but not my not my top choice for FM though although it is it is a good radio but for FM in terms of sensitivity selectivity and sound quality there is simply no contest out of all these radios that I've got here on the table today this one the D model 1 BT is just unsupportable this is a absolutely fantastic radio the sound that comes out of this radio is amazing it's clear but it's not harsh on the ear it's got nice bass it's really really excellent quality sound I also use this radio for streaming sometimes this is my office radio so when I am working and I need background music I stream from the internet using the Bluetooth functionality on this radio and I choose this one for the streaming because the sound quality as I say is excellent so keep in mind I'm not comparing these radios to one another I'm telling you what is my favorite here out of what I have available what I have in my house and what I can use so when it comes to FM if I have to choose the best FM radio I have it will be this one the T model model one Bluetooth so I'm going to show you briefly just a quick sound test on all five these radios so that you can compare for [Music] yourself is what you are you are my treasure you are my treasure you are my treasure you you whole lot of Joe Berg's best old school in R&D hot 1027 come on M how about put in a crack look at you darling I think I already for medium wave dxing I actually feel like I still need a really good radio for that I do have one that I think is very very good and that's the one that I use mostly for for medium wave dxing and there's a second one that is also quite good but it's its tuning functionalities is a little bit not finicky but it's just difficult um so that one is not perfect although the ception on medium wave is very very good but for medium wave mostly I have only four radios that I use for that all these small Portables that I showed you they all can pick up medium wave and I can use them for medium wave dxing the really really tiny Texans like the Texon PL 368 this one here they work actually quite well also on medium W with those little plug-in ferite antennas that you get for them but I I tend to not really use these ones this one as well as the BL 360 that I have this one year they both work the same on medium wave um about the same sensitivity and they are good you can really I've picked up interesting things on these with with this one the pl 368 when I was in Cape Town I picked up a radio station from Angola that is hard to get here in Johannesburg so it works definitely on medium wave I just tend not to use these on medium wave for no particular reason actually so my medium wave radios there are four as I said this one the Sony IC fj40 which I bought second hand for a very good price I don't even remember how much but it was really really inexpensive a very strange radio this one you don't find much online about it you yeah there's just really no information but it's still being being sold as new in the Middle East in particular I know one of my viewers indicated they just recently bought this in Pakistan but this was made originally in the 1980s some sources say although there's not anything that I could find that actually confirms that it was made in the 1980s and then revived now in the early 2000s but it's been on the market again in the Middle East and Africa in the early 20 000s and right up until now as I say in in some countries it has a very big internal fite antenna probably about that length so that is why if you can see my fingers there it's quite long like that more or less so that is why it's very good on medium wave and it is I haven't been doing much medium wave dxing lately because it's summertime now in South Africa for me it works best in our winter time so from about April until about September I have a lot of success on medium wave lately no it's not even worth trying so I haven't been using any of these radios lately but this is one that I do use picks up distant signals it's a full analog radio so the tuning display is not digital but yeah it it is fairly accurate and you can find the signals easily um you can isolate them nicely it's it's a very good radio so this is one of my options for medium wave dxing the next one would be the tan icr 1110 now this is the one that I said that the tuning is a little bit finicky it doesn't have a tuning dial or a tuning wheel so you need to actually punch in the frequencies manually which means you need to know the frequencies you can do a scan also it does scan through the frequencies but then it finds only the strong ones obviously if you are dxing for some weak signals you need to manually punch in the frequency but it works also really really well and this one has a very deep nice sound as well I actually neglected to mention this one in my FM discussion not for any reason but I tend to not actually use this one for FM um this one is a medium Wave go-to radio but it is also very very good on FM this is only FM AM radio uh it is very selective on FM very very good sound you'll hear just now when I when I play a little bit of a medium wave demonstration so also a really really excellent radio not that well known this one but you can buy it from from Asia still it's available in quite a number of stores also got a recording function and you can play you know this SD card capability so you can play that as well very very nice radio really excellent on medium wave to be honest I've had some very good medium wave catches on this one signals from Europe and keep in mind I'm in South Africa so good medium Wave radio I just wish it had a tuning dial so that I you know could search for frequencies manually instead of punching them in so that's why this one just about doesn't make it to be my favorite medium Wave radio now you'll be surprised to know that I also use my tiv sometimes for medium Wave dxing It's got at the back if I can turn the radio around there is an external am antenna Inlet there so I plug in my ton A200 antenna you can plug it in there with a cable I do that and then this one can be used for medium wave dxing surprisingly and it is actually quite quite nice then because this is a very selective radio so you can separate signals with this very it's quite a tight tuning dial but it's very very accurate so the display here is very accurate can find frequencies if you know if there are signals that are close to one another it's very easy to separate them with this tuning dial so I have used it The Sound unfortunately unlike on FM the medium wave sound is a little bit muffled on this one so some times you might be able to find a very weak frequency but you cannot actually make out too much because the sound is too muffled so it works for medium wave it's a fun fun radio to try sometimes for medium wave but again this is not my favorite medium Wave radio favorite medium Wave radio would be the xh data d808 this radio is just such an excellent radio in so many respects it's got a big internal ferite coil antenna and the medium wave reception is very good it finds very very weak signals unlike the dexon icr 110 that I just showed you a little bit earlier you can actually manually tune here it's actually got a fine tuning Little Wheel here as well but this is one of the flaws on this radio this fine-tuning wheel that I have yeah mine broke I haven't had the radio for more than about a year and a half and this thing doesn't work anymore I actually opened up the radio to try to fix it but I couldn't see where and how to actually fix that so that is a flaw n that is a a quality thing on this radio which is unfortunate because otherwise it's good in many respects it's very good and this is my main medium Wave radio for medium wave dxing I have caught interesting long distance signals on this one uh good quality re ction I got radio rosi for example vesty FM these are Russian signals coming from mova I picked them up on this one with just the internal antenna in our winter time of course as I said but it works pick up many signals from all over Africa on this one I've even picked up Spain and Romania but that was a while ago about a year and a half ago also on this one so good for medium wave top of the line very very good radio just a bity about the the quality so I will show you again just briefly the sound quality on these four radios for medium wave I it's not a dxing signal it's just a local medium wave signal but at least it will just give you a little bit of an idea of what these radios sound like on medium wave 657 radio pulpit and 729 K pulpit [Music] news AR for for really enjoy mediumwave dxing but for me My First Love was and is shortwave listening so most of the radios that I buy I get them for their shortwave functionality because that is what I will use them for most of the time so everything that we have here these are the radios that I use for my shortwave listening there are some that I use more than others and that is what this video is about I'm going to talk about my favorite shortwave radios and then after that we will get to my favorite radio for everything out of all these radios that we've seen today so for me a good shortwave radio should be a radio that picks up signals with just its whip antenna more than just the strong signals because most radios can do that it should at least give you a little bit of dxing capability the sound should be good enough that you can actually figure out what you are hearing and it should also ideally work well if you attach an external antenna like a wire cuz I use a 10 M 27 ft wire very very often when I am dxing so out of all these radios there are a couple that I tend to use most of the time I'm going to start with this little one very unknown radio ton r808 it's no longer in production I think it's almost impossible to get this now it is actually exactly the same radio as the gik Mini World be 100 excellent little radio the band coverage is only from the 16 M BAND up to the 49 M BAND but what I use this one for it's like a little scanning radio when I want to spend an evening dxing before I actually sit down and start using one of my more capable radios this one often is the one that gives me an idea of what is out there and of band conditions I can scan through the bands very very quickly and this one will show me if it's actually a good night for dxing and why I use this one and not any of the others is because it is so sensitive this is a surprisingly sensitive little radio as Tiny as it is it's got not the best quality sound but it works it's functional it works on medium wave it works on FM it's just for me this is a tiny little radio that I can take with me anytime anywhere and this is my goto radio often when I start an evening off dxing just to check what is out there because it's so quick and easy to scan through the bands I love this radio I wish they still made them so I could get another one because the sensitivity on this one is is out of this world it's really amazing then with these very small radios the ton r909 the retic is b115 the Texon R 9012 I tend to use them at times but they are obviously not my my favorite dxing radios mainly because the well the display on this Texon and on the Texon r99 is not digital so you know sometimes it's a little bit difficult to know what exactly you are listening to the retics v115 of course does have a digital display uh this radio makes a lot of internal noise and if you touch the screen here with your hand it makes noise when you are listening if you attach a 10 m wire to this one and you just keep your hands away from the screen it actually works very very well it's a good dxing radio this one and while it's not my favorite um for shortwave listening I highly recommend this little radio if you are starting out with shortwave listening if you are looking into just maybe exploring a little bit The Hobby and you want something that can pick up a lot of stuff this radio it's cheap it's it's less than $20 these days even much lower than that sometimes just if you get this and if you use this to try to get into the shortwave listening hobby just get a wire you know a long piece of electrical wire about 27 ft 10 m attach it here just tie it around the antenna and stretch that wire outside your house uh it should be stretched out as far as possible and you're going to be surprised what this little thing can do and of course it can record it can play SD cards very very useful radio so out of all my very small radios I think this one is by far the most useful one the Texan R 9012 is a nice enough radio I think it's a bit noisy it's definitely not my favorite it is sensitive it picks up signals but this is this is not a go-to radio in general listening conditions for me if I really want a very small radio to take with me it is this one the xh data d219 while the ton R 9012 and the r909 and that r808 are full analog radios this is a DSP based radio with an analog display but the sensitivity on this one is it's just beyond amazing I am always surprised what I get on my bigger radios I get it on this radio so for someone again if you are new to DX you want to try out shortwave listening by all means consider this because this is so cheap I think it's only around $10 nowadays you will pick up pretty much what people with much bigger radios pick up the only issue here is that you don't know the exact frequency so it's a little bit difficult sometimes to identify what you are listening to in the old days when I started out with shortwave dxing when I was a teenager there were no manuals and stuff to tell you what you were listening to and the displays were not digital they were like this analog so we identified stations by listening until there was a station ID until someone actually announced what station you were listening to that's probably something that you will need to do with this one or you can identify nearby stations sometimes it's easy to ID the BBC for example and then you can by checking the shortwave sites you can quite easily see what's the signal right next to it so there are ways to identify your signals I I cannot recommend this one enough it is for the price absolutely top of the class radio it's just that you know you don't have that digital frequency display but otherwise very very good another one of my goto shortwave radios is the Texon PL 368 a real favorite this is an allrounder it does everything well it is good on medium wave it is very good on short wave it's got SSB so single Side Band functionality to listen to the utility signals Su spice signals I only have two radios that can do that well and and this is one of them and I do enjoy those utility signals so for me this radio is is very good the the speaker is a little bit harsh you can call it that maybe a bit you know thinny almost but it's very clear for that reason so when you are listening to voice broadcasts it's actually quite easy to to understand what is going on and to identify the station so this one is easily in my top two for my for my short wave radios I really really like this and it is a radio that I use again and again and again um I'm not doing a radio review yet so I'm not going to tell you about all the functionalities on this radio but it's it's good it's a real allrounder and it can do pretty much anything that any big machine can do the pl 360 is similar but it's just doesn't have the single Side Band and it doesn't have the the buttons for entering the frequency so you need to search with the tuning wheel but a nice very very good radio as well so then another favorite is the Eaton Elite traveler 3 again there's no single Side Band on this one but good on shortwave it's got uh as I mentioned earlier already it's got a good speaker the sound is very very good very small short antenna but when you clip on a wire it it works the speak ER sound on this one is so good that sometimes I use this one to identify very weak signals that I'm unable to identify on any of my other favorite radios so if I pick up something on the pl 368 and it's just not possible to hear what's going on or on the xh data d808 I come to this one and often then I can at least identify the language I can at least you know maybe pick up some words so a good good little short wave radio it's just not the one that I use all the time because it doesn't have single side band but out of my shortwave radios my portable shortwave radios this one is in the top three definitely and then we have the xh data d109 it's a new radio been on the market for about a year or so very similar in my opinion to the Ean Elite traveler 3 it's got a bit wider band coverage this one and a bit more functionality you can actually change the bandwidth that you cannot do on the on the eaten Traveler but this one also doesn't have single Side Band it does have Bluetooth functionality sound quality on this one similar to the etin very very good so that makes it a good radio to use good across all bands FM medium wave shortwave again not my immediate goto shortwave radio because it doesn't have single Side Band and that is something that I tend to use quite a lot but if you are considering a little bit more expensive radio if you want to get into shortwave listening and perhaps you feel this one doesn't quite give you what you want and you want to pay a little bit more then this would be my suggestion xh data d109 it's not an expensive radio I think it's around $60 or so these days and you will pick up lots of stuff it it really picks up very distant signals with a good speaker as well you'll be able to have a lot of fun with this radio so definitely one to consider but for shortwave in terms of Portables specifically this one would be my favorite this radio the xh data d808 I feature it often on my channel it's the one that I use very very often for my dxing it does have single Side Band it covers all the bands medium wave FM long wave as well I don't pick up anything on longwave here in South Africa but it does it can do that although apparently it's not very sensitive long wave but for short wve very good I think the noise floor on this one on the xh data is a little bit higher than on the Tex Sun BL 368 so sometimes again if I listen on my xh data d8 and I just cannot quite identify what is going on I might come to the TCH sun and it will be a little bit more intelligible on that tchon for me so the tchon is very useful in the that sense but these two are very close these these two radios are to be honest my favorite shortwave listening radios and then they also serve me on other bands on medium wave as well on FM as well although they are not they are not my go-to radios for those other bands if I really just want to do medium wave dxing I might use one of the other radios I've showed you but this one is also one of my medium wave dxing radios so in that sense this one serves me well for medium wave and for shortwave dxing and of course I have these two much bigger radios the Kenwood r1000 and this Barlo Woodley these both of these I picked up secondhand the B Woodley is a top of the line radio it was released in the 1970s at that time it was seen as one of the best shortwave radios that had ever been made it still works mine even though it's almost 50 years old I use it often that display that you see there is very accurate mine is off by 20 khz but I know that so I can just add 20 KZ to what I see on the screen and then my frequency is 100% accurate so you can actually search by just using that dial there and find frequencies it's a it's a great radio and the sound on this radio as well is very very very good so I use it I use it quite often it's not my Prime shortwave dxing radio but it's a lot of fun to use that just because it is so old and you know it's just something different to use for your dxing kwood r1000 excellent receiver in all respects it just works perfectly again it's a secondhand radio I I got it for a very good price I use it quite often the sound on that one is much better than any of my Portables the SSB functionality on that one is not perfect I don't know if it's uh you know if it's just something that went wrong over the years or I'm doing something wrong but I haven't been able to do any SSB listening on this one I can hear there is noise but I just there's no way that I can isolate that that signal and actually hear what is going on so for that reason this one is also not actually one of my top radios although it is an absolutely top-of-the-line receiver so this brings me to my final conclusion out of all these radios if I really had to choose only one what would it be and I think you probably know what I'm going to answer and I think many of you might agree some might not but it will have to be the xh data d808 this radio for what it does is a little Marvel the price is is very good it's not an expensive it is an expensive radio but you know it's not expensive compared to some other models on the on the market and as I said now in this video for medium wave it's terrific for short wave it is just excellent not so good sound it's doesn't have the best speaker in the world but you can manage and you can always of course plug in earphones or just plug in an external speaker as well but if I really really had to choose only one radio it would be this one of course this is for me this is my choice with the things that I enjoy I really like listening to utility signals so for me my final favorite radio must have SSB functionality which unfortunately disqualifies most of the radios that I have here but if you are just listening to regular shortwave broadcasts there are many other options here that I mentioned and showed what they do well so then you know there are probably other radios here that you will enjoy right I would love to hear your comments and also what you would have picked If This Were your choice but to conclude then this will have to be my favorite radio of 2023

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Length: 33min 19sec (1999 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 19 2023