Sangean America DT-210 DT-210 AM/FM Digital Tuning Pocket Radio
by Sangean
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Sangean America DT-210 DT-210 AM/FM Digital Tuning Pocket Radio
Customer Review: A Good Buy
Summary: 5 Stars
DT 210 V:
About sixteen years ago I started regularly walking the two miles between my home and my office at the university where I taught until my recent retirement. I bought a cheap ($14.95) Koss walkman-type of AM/FM/Cassette unit to listen to on the way. My favorite station by far was the university's classical music station which came in with crystal clarity despite the mere 5000W strength of the signal and the fact that the transmitter was a number of miles away. The Koss unit had a poorly designed belt clip, the outcome being several falls to the sidewalk, each of which knocked off another chip or two. Finally, about 9 to 10 years later, although superglue and duct tape did an admirable job of holding the exterior together, terminal interior trauma ended its useful lifetime.
Of course, I couldn't even find a Koss unit to replace it and bought a considerably more costly Sony. The signal of my favorite station at 90.7 MHz was totally swamped by harmonics from more powerful nearby rock stations. I took it back and exchanged it for an even more expensive Sony. It did an even poorer job. Finally, after trying out two more units of brands I have forgotten, I found a Panasonic that had sufficient selectivity to let me enjoy my favorite station again. The tone of the Panasonic, while acceptable, was never particularly good. After about five years of use the output started distorting so badly that I began a search for another radio. I found that not many were on display any more, and all the ones I did find suffered from the same flaw. My favorite station was unusable. Realizing by now that small radios with good enough selectivity to reject unwanted harmonics from other stations were a very rare critter, I began a search of user comments on web reviews and was thus alerted to Sangean radios. On the basis of those reviews I ordered a Sangean DT 210 V online for about $42.
The tone of the DT 210 was extraordinarily good, especially when I substituted the headphones from my discarded Panasonic radio for the earbuds that came with the DT210. Unfortunately, my favorite station signal wasn't even noticeable among the hash from several other more powerful stations. Now, that radio has a peculiarity in that the headphone cord also serves as an antenna. Acting on a hunch I reduced the antenna exposure by bunching up the headphone cord into a tiny space and voila! My station was there, crystal clear, with no simultaneous garble from agricultural market reports or rock accompaniment. I have since found that if I reduce the antenna exposure by wrapping nearly all of the headphone cord round and round the DT210 and carrying the radio in my shirt pocket instead of hanging it on my belt, I can listen not only to my 90.7 MHz favorite, but to several other low power stations in that part of the dial that are challenging even for the superior radios in our several automobiles.
As it is, my only remaining source of dissatisfaction lies in the fact that that I haven't found out how to make it stay in the "memory" (pre-select) mode. I can get it to cycle through the pre-selected stations nicely, but if I stop on one to listen for more than five or ten seconds, it slips back into manual mode, and I have to reset it on "Memory" to avoid having to plod through all the in-between frequencies to get to the next one I want.
If it weren't for that inconvenience, the radio's superior sensitivity on all bands, its good selectivity (once the antenna exposure is properly controlled), and its very good tonal reproduction, taken together with a very convenient size, I gave it a "5" because there was no provision for the 4.5 I think it deserves.
Happy in Omaha
Customer Review: Great radio - a real performer! Excellent value.
Summary: 5 Stars
I am in a very weak signal area. I have had several Sony SRF-M35 (I am hard on radios). Primarily, I listen to AM broadcast and based on other reviews I have read, I thought this radio might do a little better in that area - I was not disappointed.A major improvement for me over my Sony (which is a good radio, I might add - I bought at least 4 of them over the years) is in its interference immunity. I recently installed a LCD monitor at work inside a building that attenuates AM pretty severely. The tremendous amount digital whining and other irritating noise that thing spews out coupled with a weak signal was intolerable. This radio deals with those issues MUCH better. At home, I live near a very noisy power line that virtually wipes my favorite weak station. This radio brings that signal in to a degree that I can easily listen to it everywhere in my house. I am not kidding here, I can actually see it arching at night! No other portable radio I have does anywhere near as well (I have several other Sangean shortwave radios as well). Even my beloved Drake R8 is pretty worthless although I have yet to give it a proper antenna (building that 3' tuned loop antenna is one of those weekend projects I have yet to get to). Overall, for a portable, its weak signal performance and interference immunity is absolutely spectacular.
The sound quality is very good. I have noticed some hiss on very weak signals however the drastically improved signal fidelity may account for my increased awareness of this.
I like the controls. I find that they are easy to use for me. They aren't perfect but they don't hinder either. The volume control is a little too sensitive but it is manageable. I love having 10 channels on AM! My Sony only allowed for only 5. Setting them is painless. It also has an auto seek feature not present on my Sony. The swivel belt clip is a very nice innovation. That was a major problem for me with my Sony. I constantly was hooking the radio on things while it was hanging on my belt and breaking the belt clip off. For a while, I thought I should invest in an epoxy company. This clip design seems to have pretty much solved that problem. Also, it is easy to adjust the radio orientation vertically on your belt to maximize reception.
I really don't care much about FM but it seems to perform well - at least until we get some stations here worth listening to. I would agree with another reviewer that the included ear-buds tend to saturate with the DBB setting. The ear-buds sound good enough though and if you buy some better headphones, it sounds great! I don't need the TV reception at all but it seems adequate. I also like the fact that it has a speaker with very small increase in size over my Sony. The speaker isn't at all tinny sounding as one might expect it would.
The battery life seems to be very good as well. I have been running the radio off of some "used" batts borrowed from one of my semi-retired Sonys for a half a week and they are still going strong. I usually got about a week of worth of use with the Sony from a fresh set so I am encouraged. It certainly isn't any worse.
I have bought another one for use at home.
Bottom line, I don't have a whole lot to say that is bad about this radio. At this price, it is worth every penny. The only thing I wish it had was a back lit display but I guess that is what flashlights are for.
Customer Review: Not quite the equal of the previous DT-210
Summary: 4 Stars
[Late-breaking news: I've just discovered that this DT-210 is not entirely identical with the DT-210 being sold on Amazon 5 years ago. The earlier model had a TV band, which has since become gratuitous due to digitalization of telecasts. Whether that small modification could possibly affect performance elsewhere on the radio and account for some of the recent negative reviews, I'm as yet unprepared to say.]
[Later-breaking news: After doing a close A-B comparison between the 5-year-old DT-210 (followed by a small "v") and the current DT-210 (no "v" suffix), it became apparent that the present model is not quite up to the sensitivity and selectivity of the previous DT-210. The present model was unable to pick up the fringe PBS FM station that my wife depends upon for broadcasts from the BBC. I was hoping it would be a back-up, but unfortunately it goes back.]
[Below is my review before doing a thorough and rigorous comparison between the 2 supposedly "identical" models. Since writing it, I've removed a star from my rating of the current DT-210]:
Perhaps I should I have titled this review (testimonial, actually) "Proof of the theory of relativity." My experience with the Sangean DT-210 has been totally positive. Amazon's convenient records show that I purchased the radio in April 2005. It was a gift to my wife, and suffice it to say I've never given anyone anything that met with greater approval and saw such continual, practically unrelenting, use--quite literally every single day and night for the past 5 years. In fact, when she thought she'd lost it during our holiday travels, she immediately ordered another, even paying extra to have it overnighted.
Of course, such haste all but insured that serendipity would prevail, and now that a hotel has located the lost DT-210 and mailed it back to us, she has two. She could return the new model, but that would put her at risk of going a day without benefit of this overachieving little marvel. I've tried to get her interested in all manner of competing, similar radios--from small Sony's to iPods with FM tuners--but she claims that nothing comes close to the Sangean in sensitivity, selectivity, audio quality (at least with good earphones), and indestructibility. And so I'm back to sleeping alongside a pillow pulling in the BBC each night, until it automatically shuts down (another nice feature of this radio) after 90 minutes.
I can't argue with the one-star reviews I'm seeing or with the bad experiences and categorical dismissals of the radio by other owners. But there's definitely another--virtually totally opposite--point of view. Perhaps theirs was the proverbial lemon or mine is the "exceptional" instance (like the DeLorean car that shone in the movie "Back to the Future" before being declared another Edsel or Yugo as far as the public was concerned). Usually, the "fact" of the matter is less a fact than a "perception" that's somewhere in between. But other Sangean products have tested out well for me, and the DT-210, moreover, has compiled an impressive track record over a fairly lengthy period. At the very least, I'm comfortable recommending the radio at its current price while bearing in mind Amazon's generous returns policy (in the event the recipient's radio, heaven forbid, proves defective).
Customer Review: My Favorite Pocket Radio
Summary: 5 Stars
I've been a radio broadcast engineer for almost 25 years. I've been an electronics experimenter and radio nut for even longer, since I was 12 years old. I've had quite a few small radios through the years, but this is the best performer so far. I was disappointed by other "Walkman" type radios. This has the best AM & FM reception of anything I've owned. Here is what I like about it. The mono/stereo mode switch for FM is great. I would rather listen to a clean mono signal than a noisy stereo one. This is especially useful for public radio news/talk programs. I don't know why NPR stations don't program their audio processors to go into mono mode during talk programming, they would increase their fringe area coverage and make a lot of cheap noisy portable radios sound better. The FM stereo reception is slightly better than the Sonys I have. The Sangean is one of the very few that lets you select the mono FM mode, a big plus for me. Also, many small radios get overloaded by strong local transmitters. This tuner is much better near one 50,000 watt FM transmitter I work near. I can still tune weaker farther away signals when I'm 3/4 mile from the 50kw tower. Someone complained in another review that it doesn't have a local/distant switch...it doesn't need it. The AM tuner is excellent, especially considering the small size of the radio. If it has a ferrite bar antenna rod, it must be small. They must have some very low noise high gain semiconductors to get such a good signal-to-noise ratio with a tiny AM antenna. The AM tuner is very sensitive and selective. I can listen to WWJ 950 AM from Detroit during the day, about 80 miles away. You can barely detect a station on 950 with my Sonys. At night, I can DX many AM stations. I was listening to hurricane Katrina coverage at night on WWL 870 AM in New Orleans. I live 20 miles north of Lansing Michigan. The TV audio reception works great, but I haven't really used it. I can get channels 5,6,8,10, and 12 where I live. The audio is weaker on TV, probably because the deviation is only 25 KHz instead of the 75 KHz used on FM. They should design these so the audio gain increases about 10 dB when tuning TV audio. That way you wouldn't need to turn up the volume when going from AM/FM to TV audio.
Someone complained about the power switch...mine works fine. The earbuds are good for listening in bed. I use headphones while walking my dogs. The box says it has 25 presets, 15 FM and 10 AM. Mine doesn't. It has 10 FM, 10 AM, and 10 TV. A minor issue. The 10 presets for TV are stupid, since there are only 12 VHF channels. It's easy enough to use the +/- tuning to get the TV channel you want.
The audio sounds great with plenty of level to drive headphones. The small speaker works OK, but you can't get much volume without clipping distortion. 95% of the time I use heaphones. The "Deep Bass Boost" (DBB) works fine with headphones, but I prefer a flat response.
I think the DT-210V deserves 5 stars, simply because it's the best pocket size radio I've tried. The reception almost equals a car radio. That's respectable for a tiny shirt pocket radio operating on 3 volts.
Customer Review: Surprisingly Nice Little Radio
Summary: 4 Stars
So far (after a month's use) I'm quite pleased with the Sangean DT-120. I purchased for walking and exercising but I find myself using it around the house as well. When you're wandering from room to room, doing something noisy (cleaning/cooking etc) it's nice not to have to have the house stereo booming. the speaker function is also a plus.
As for functionality - it's a strong 'happy' review.
The reception is very good as is the channel separation. (I'm in the Dallas metroplex, so separation of close stations is more important than receiving weak signals.
When walking over a course of 5 miles or so, there is very little signal fade or loss - no scrrrch! or rattle! - that you often get from small radios as the antenna angle changes when you walk. It's a nice listening experience with very few annoyances. "92 percent hassle free decent sounding tunes" would be about the right way to explain this.
The quality of construction seems -so far- to be fine. I'm not crazy about the odd system for hanging the radio to your belt. The clip isn't that great and it's method for attaching/deattaching from the radio seems a poor design. I've already had the radio fall off the clip a few times. Better to keep it in a pocket if you have one. Still that's my only complaint so far. I could say that the plastic cover of the radio isn't something indestructible, that's just looking for something to complain about.
I find the speaker function much more useful than I expected. It turns out that there are quite a few times when it's nice to be able to remove the earphones and still listen.
Still, if you're rough on your toys - especially when you do your workouts, I don't think I'd spend the money for this. I'd buy a cheaper one and sacrifice some sound and tuning quality for reduced expense when you inevitably have to replace it.
Back to functionality.
Battery life is good. and the batteries are easily changed. The battery covers stay attached to the radio - a small plus but a good one.
The control-lock function is nice. It locks the station choice and the AM/FM choice but it doesn't lock the volume. That's either a feature or a bug depending on your view. I'm undecided on that point.
As far as appearance - you're not going to look cool or sporty carrying this thing around. It's your grandfather's radio design in his favorite old-Buick-upholstry gray. It's fuddy-duddy. Period. You're not going to want to lay it next to somebody's iPhone. Keep it in your pocket and enjoy the tunes, but keep it out of sight.
I also think it's pretty expensive for what it is, but then it's better than all the competition, and it's not THAT much more expensive. So, if you've willing to take the chance on the long term quality (see some of the other reviews for believable warnings about on/off switch failure), you'll be happy with your choice.