Review on 6000MAh Solar Hand Crank Radio With FM/NOAA Weather Broadcast, LED Camping Lantern, Phone Charger, And SOS Emergency Signal - Portable And Battery Operated For Home, Camping, And Survival by Alex Panda

First off, I just need to talk about the Elephant in the room and it’s this: this unit is *heavy*. So heavy that when I hang it inside my tent it pulls the top center down and lets rainwater form a puddle there.Other than that, I love using this thing! Having an extendable external antenna is a real convenience; it still won’t tune in weaker FM stations, but the ones it can receive sound good, even though the speaker is tiny. The WB (Weather Band) stations come in cleanly and are easy to tune because the manufacturer added a tuning indicator! A small green light next to the frequency indicator lights up – the brighter the light, the stronger the station signal. This is great! The tuning mechanism is string dial, and the tuning knob feels a bit loose, but that tuning light makes it all work well.The lantern function takes a bit of getting used to. The light itself is great. It’s a twin LED panel. The outside panel lights up when the light panel is down. When the light panel is raised (it swings up), the inner light panel illuminates, so no matter what position the light is in, it puts out a good area of light. The lighting controls have taken me by surprise a few times, turning the light on or off when I didn’t want that to happen because the controls are touch sensitive. I had to learn to hold the unit correctly to avoid being left in the dark! Touching the Power area of the lighting control is also the only way that the charge indicator lights come on, a small inconvenience.The solar panel swings up to catch the best angle of sunlight. Charging for 8 hours gives enough charge to run the light and radio for a few hours. There’s also a crank generator but I couldn’t crank for long enough to charge the battery, so using solar power or a wall power adapter are the best ways to charge it. It’s nice to have *two* USB-A outlets to use the unit as a power bank (5Vdc @ 1.0 A max output) but the best power feature is this: underneath a black panel in the rear of the unit, the manufacturer installed three 18650 batteries as the internal power source! These can be removed (using a small Phillips head screwdriver) to power other things (a flashlight, for example) while the light and radio operate from three AAA batteries in the base of the unit. I suppose that it’s all the power options that make this device so heavy, so I guess that the weight is well worth it!The emergency siren function is super loud and could frighten a predator (or awaken a lazy tentmate!). And for all its good points, this radio/lantern/power bank does a lousy job of standing upright, so hanging or laying it down works best. But it’s got a permanent place in my camping kit, guaranteed!