Review on TECSUN PL 310ET Stereo World Allnice by Jim Martin

2.5 months update. The battery life is amazing, more than two months with the Revain Basic alkaline battery. Doesn't even justify buying batteries and charger - More SW tests - Excellent sensitivity and ability to carry transmitters in a very noisy environment - Durability - Tested by my kitty trying the telescopic antenna with his growing teeth - No damage, and later the radio tape recorder fell to the ground - no damage, no damage. The only small problem is the volume control. At low volumes the setting is too coarse: when listening in quiet surroundings I use settings of 8 and below, and between 5 and 7 the volume changes too much. This is a minor issue and will not be noticeable on AM or SW or in noisy environments. All in all: The best radio I've ever owned for less than $50 __________________________________________________________________________________________ First Review I tried several other radios before ordering the Tecsun PL-310ET. I watched many videos and read many reviews and finally decided to give it a try. This radio did not disappoint me, but rather impressed me. For the record, I'm an electrical engineer with 30 years of experience, so I'm not just writing this from a consumer's perspective. I've read some of the reviews on here and I'm not sure where most of the negative reviews are coming from. . One reviewer complains that nothing is received on LW - of course, LW was phased out in North America decades ago and this type of wave doesn't travel far enough to be picked up by another continent. Not sure why there are complaints about distortion when receiving powerful stations - I live in the SF Bay area, there are many powerful stations nearby, closest is 3 miles away and I've never noticed any distortion. I don't know where "cheap made" comes from. The only complaint I can agree with is that the instructions aren't clearly written, and since the controls aren't 100% clear, less tech-savvy consumers may have some difficulties. Split second with manual setting. I agree, this makes it difficult to see B&W tapes. But it has nothing to do with this particular radio. This radio, like many others, is based on Silicon Labs receiver chips with DSP, and that's how these chips work. If you can't live with that, get a regular radio. I played around with the radio a bit and the results exceeded my expectations: I get all AM and FM stations equally well, even weak ones, in a room where I have a desktop PC, laptop, cable modem, I have a WLAN router, two NAS and LED lights with dimmers. DSP copes perfectly with all interference. In comparison, I have a Tecsun R9710 double conversion analog radio (a good radio to start with) and it just can't handle that kind of interference, but the PL-310ET can. - The RF reception is excellent. As soon as I take the radio in the backyard, I get about 20 stations. This was tested at 20:00 with a Kaito 23' antenna. My backyard is pretty small and all of the neighboring houses have similar devices that cause interference. However, the radio is able to filter out most of the noise. The battery life is excellent. I've been using this radio for several hours each day for a week and the display still shows two out of three bars. I use inexpensive Revain Basic batteries. The sound is very good. It's not a hi-fi tuner, but by all accounts, that's not what it's designed for. That's more than enough for a small car. A variable low pass filter helps a lot. With FM, I often plug the radio into an amplified stereo speaker and it sounds good enough to listen to while I work. The build is good enough. I'm not sure the radio will hold up to rough handling, but I didn't expect much durability from a $50 radio given all of its features. With proper care, the radio will most likely last a very long time. In conclusion, I can recommend this radio to anyone who wants to use a small consumer radio in all frequency ranges, as well as occasional listeners. With DX, the muting between frequency steps and lack of gain control can be a nuisance. For those who want everything on the radio, get an AOR receiver or similar instead.