Sangean ATS-404 Radio

Cute little radio....

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Oct 8, 2004

Pros: Well-made, compact, easy to use, durable

Cons: short battery life, poor am reception, difficult to tune short wave stations

I have several short wave radios and thought this one would be a good addition for travel and moving from room to room. It is very well made, looks great and seems to be quite durable. It has all expected features including digital tuning, a sleep ti...mer, dual time zones and a manually operated light. The scan feature fails to pick up any but the strongest stations so if there are 20 local stations in a particular area, it may "find" only a few of them. AM reception is not particularly good for any but the strongest and closest. Digital tuning is nice but analog tuning seems to work better for finding distant short wave stations. The biggest disadvantage I've found is that the batteries are quickly depleted and even go dead fairly quickly when the radio is attached to the optional AC adapter. I found this very unusual and got a new adapter but the same phenomenon still exists. I must assume it is a characteristic of this model. Overall, it is a decent radio but I have a less expensive Grundig which was cheaper and has better reception. The battery depletion factor, alone, would keep me from considering buying it again. Read more Less