MIDLAND WR300 Weather Radio
by Midland
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of MIDLAND WR300 Weather Radio
Customer Review: Sort of Great Product if this were the 60s or 70s; Not So Responsible Company
Summary: 2 Stars
Living in Florida we have multiple perils.. hurricane, flood, tornado... this weather radio purchased less than 2 years ago put my family more at easy - we slept better at night. We also researched it thoroughly and thought we were purchasing the gold-standard of weather alert products and it was important as our county (Charlotte) does not have a public weather siren warning system (but that's another story of irresponsibility). This radio was fine for a while and a few weeks ago we stopped getting the weather testing signal from it and could not get weather news or alerts - according to other users on news groups it is "defunct". Why will it still get FM radio yet not alerts from the regional NWS? Well one would think a responsible company would repair these while still relatively new at cost say of postage both ways... but no, they want you to purchase a new one (or rebuilt one at new Amazon discounted retail price) every couple years evidently. Well they are probably not aware that many of us have been struck by another "natural disaster" called the "Great Recession" and it is not possible to replace equipment with built-in-obsolescence every two years as it might have been prior to 2008 so my family now will have to go without due to another in the increasing list of greedy, irresponsible companies that care more for a few points added to their bottom line than civic responsibility. When I can re-purchase, I will seek out another brand of emergency weather alert radios, but NOT a Midland thank you please. BTW, the top of the line Midland is somewhat designed in its set up and feature control like a product out of the 60s or 70s not the 2000s - so they are not evidently putting any R&D into this antique cash cow.Customer Review: Very Functional And Easy To Use
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this for its features as I live in 'Tornado Alley' and although I do live in town I find it very difficult to hear the tornado sirens even if I know there is a warning. So I never hear it when I am asleep.
After reading the well written instructions once I found it very easy to program the alert monitor. I did have to look up the codes on NOAA site and then just input these where required. All setup and running in 5 to 10 minutes.
The only thing that was not explained in the instruction book was the section on deactivating certain alarms. You have two choices, 1. WARNING and 2. ADMINISTRATIVE. The instruction book does not actually explain what the latter is but I assume ADMINISTRATIVE are all the non-warning alarms, i.e. watches, etc. Warning alarms can not be turned off but is that not the point of having this device.
Another nice feature is the local weather at the touch of a button. Being an avid hunter it is nice to listen to the day's weather conditions in the warmth of bed before getting up and listening to the weather channel.
OK, now for the one thing I dont like ... the backlit display can be continuous or just lit for a couple of seconds. Fair enough but the display is so bright, and I mean BRIGHT it lights up the whole bedroom and if it is set to light at touch of a button, it beeps loudly as it does with every button press. Seems with all the features this has a, dimmer could be incorporated for the backlight and beeping for every button press could be deactivated. For this I take a star off but for the sake of all its other features it is definitely a must have safety device in the area I live in.
Customer Review: Decent WX alert radio
Summary: 4 Stars
This radio works fairly decent, but as stated by others, every button push emits a loud beep. Turning the beeps to a low volume also turns the alert siren to a low volume that cannot be heard unless you are in the same room. With that in mind, I found the alarm-clock/clock-radio feature of this radio to be of limited use due to the loud beeping for every key push. So I use this radio for the WX alert feature only. On the high volume setting the alert beeps are loud enough to be heard throughout the house, and the radio's speaker volume goes loud enough to be heard across the house without distortion.
I live in an area where the reception of any NOAA broadcast stations are somewhat poor, so the radio does not receive well unless it is placed near an exterior wall or window. Placing it in any room near the center of the house and all reception is lost. My Icom T90A handheld transceiver will still receive the signals fairly well in locations where the Midland WR-300 radio loses all reception. I feel that Midland could have done a better job by building the radio with a more sensitive receiver or by using a better antenna specifically tuned for the VHF frequency spectrum the radio is designed to receive (somewhere between 161-163 MHz). Of course if one was inclined to, it is possible to buy or build an outdoor antenna to improve reception, since the radio does come supplied with an accessory antenna jack.
The backup battery life of the radio is very good, last year during hurricane season the power was out for about 4 days and the radio stayed in standby mode 24/7 thru the power outage for 3 of those 4 days before the batteries went dead.
Customer Review: Disappointing
Summary: 2 Stars
I recently decided to purchase a weather radio to recieve the E.A.S. broadcast in case of an emergency. This item was going to be for my "Ready" kit. The unit seems to be well built, the display is bright and the unit is easily programmable. The problem was in that the firmware or programming was from 2002. It did not contain the current EAS event codes. The new codes were implemented in June 2004. This unit allows you to program 5 "New" codes, but the differences between the old codes and the new ones were significant. My unit was missing 17 EAS codes, but had some codes that were not even on the EAS list. I imagine that the missing codes, if signaled, would have indicated a "Unrecognizable watch/warning/statement". For the amount of $$ that I paid, I expect the unit software to be up to date. There is no documentation or instructions on how to update the unit. I doubt that this problem would effect the overall emergency alerting of the unit, but I want to be able to know that the correct alert had been sent.
The users manual was horrible. It did not list all of the items that you could change in the menu such as backlight display, additional codes, etc..
It's possible that I got an older unit or one that had been returned and you might not have these problems. The device seemed ok except for these issues. I do agree with another reviewer in that the beeping of the keys is a bit annoying.
I was also dissapointed in the way my radio was shipped. It was loosely packed in a damaged cardboard box, luckily it worked when it arrived.
I am going to purchase a Reecom 1650 instead.
Customer Review: Works well, but has older technology that no longer is used.
Summary: 4 Stars
----Likes
* Good Reception
* Moderately easy to set up
* SAME one-county alert only (can include more than one if desired)
* Good tonal quality and volume.
* Ability to use alert tone or voice only when alerted by radio stations.
----Dislikes
* The ability to add up to 5 homeland security alerts is there in the radio setup, but it is not mentioned in the owner's manual. In fact, I found an old PDF manual for this radio on the internet that discussed this feature, but it is not discussed in the manual that I received with my unit. I wrote tech support at Midland for additional information but received no reply. Further research indicates to me that the way the weather stations broadcast the alerts has changed, making this feature no longer applicable or usable.
* The backlight has only one setting - very bright, or off. This makes it way too much light for a bed-side clock radio so I have to leave the backlight off because that's where I keep it. It comes on if you push a button for a little while. This makes it a hassle to check and see what time it is when you wake up in the middle of the night.
* Every time you press a button, a fairly loud beep acknowleges the key press. Now imagine you're sleeping next to someone, wake up in the middle of the night and want to check the time and the backlight is off. You press a button which lights up the backlight, and an awakening beep awakes the other person in the room - not good.
* You can only program 3 AM and 3 FM stations into memory. The rest you'll have to tune by using the joy-stick-like arrow buttons.