Roberts DAB / FM Digital Solar Radio - Black

I like it, a great little radio. I mainly listen to speech on it, so I couldn't really comment about its musical performance, but it has a single 2 ish inch speaker, so its a trade off for weight, size cost and portability! But great for me for speech radio. To me it sounds fine, not boxy or tinny at all.Good points:A matter of opinion but it looks nice, better than in the picture, it appears and feels well made. The press buttons also feel good quality (I'm fussy!).It has a proper volume DIAL no stupid pressy buttons for the volume.On DAB it takes a very acceptable 3 seconds to start up.In the pics the solar panel seems to dominate the design, it almost put me off, but again it looks absolutely fine in reality.Reception in my poor recception area is excellent, previous radios failed dismally in the very same spots in my house where this beast works just fine, I occasionally have to pull the aerial out a bit but that is no problem at all.The display is large, bright and clear, it illuminates for a few seconds when you turn the thing on and when you change the stations, a good idea.I use it 10 - 30 minutes a day on speech radio mainly, set fairly loud (its a big room) its never going to deafen anyone but it can go well beyond more than loud enough for me without the sound deteriorating. I put it in the window facing south,and despite the winter daylight it charges from the available daylight just fine, I got it around december, use it everyday, and in mid March I have never had to charge it with the mains charger, the daylight it gets has charged it just fine! Obviously I don't know if I'm using 10% or 99% of the available charge.The sound is nice and clear, some have said its a little bassy, but I haven't noticed that, there is no adjustment for bass and treble but I don't think its necessary on a unit like this.I like the dial you can turn through the available channels on DAB and just press to select, and the autotune setup worked so well I don't even remember pressing it.i PARTICULARLY like the "favourite" button, I have it set to a DAB channel and it always goes to the correct station even if it is on FM and not DAB. - nice touch.I like the addition of the low battery LED. It hasn't gone flat yet but I appreciate the warning!The display shows the station you are listening to and the time and date which i like, or a bit of blurb about the radio station.Its small, light and portable, and I never need to charge it!One major plus with Roberts radios in particular, it might not sound like much but on DAB the 4 I have dotted around the house are all in sync, that is, the audio does not have the irritating few second difference I used to get with other radios in the past.Not so good but not really that bad points:I'm being picky, but the "preset" took a little getting used to, but ok once I got used to it, with preset "off" the tuning dial goes through all the DAB channels, and with preset "on" (A big heart symbol on the display) the tuning dial goes through the stored presets only. After getting used to it it works well, and I suppose you can more easily have lot of presets stored (I don't know how many it can hold, but I have 6 set and thats all I need) and maybe its better than it brisling with preset buttons.Thanks to probably clumsiness occasionally when I pick it up to wander around with it I hit the power button. Always at a crucial moment! Aaagh!I wish they had said more clearly on the amazon writeup it has batteries in the box, on the amazon page it says "Batteries 3 Lithium ion batteries required" so I ordered them separately, and further down the page it said "Uses 3 x LR6 (AA size) batteries or rechargeable equivalent (included)" which I didn't read. Something like "Yes, it comes with batteries, stupid" at the top would have been handy for me.Also if you use rechargeable batteries which I guess almost all will, make sure the switch inside the battery cover is set to the correct type. Not sure exactly what it does but what I know about batteries its important to charge them correctly.I had a black model but wish now I'd been a bit more imaginative and got a brightly coloured red or green one! Oh well, i could always buy another one...

I bought this radio as a present for my Dad. We haven't played with it enough yet to completely assess it, but initial impressions are very good.First of all, the sound quality is excellent, as I'd expect from a Roberts. It's not "tinny", and has plenty of bass without being "boomy", so you can comfortably listen to it almost anywhere. Reception is good, and operation is extremely simple. The first time it was switched on it automatically found all the DAB stations in our area. Tuning is simple - scroll through the stations until you find what you want. There are other functions to display information etc., but half the time you won't need them.Regarding battery life - This appears to be very good, but we haven't tested it enough to be confident about this. If there is a reasonable source of light nearby, then it will run from its solar panel rather than the batteries (or at least supplement the batteries) - so all I can say is battery life is extremely good if you use it near a window or light. When outside or in a summer house, it appears to run completely from solar power. Charging from the mains is very fast, and the radio has a little LED to tell you if it's getting solar or mains power, and if the batteries have finished charging. Should the batteries not last very well, they are standard AA batteries so could be replaced easily with better rechargeables. As far as charging from solar power goes, I can't quite tell from the instruction manual whether it can charge from the panel or just uses it to supplement the batteries. Seeing as we tend to use it in quite light locations, I can't yet tell whether the batteries actually charge from solar power when it's switched off, or not. Either way it's lasting a good while.The black case is very smart and the smooth plastic may eventually scratch but seems to be at least moderately durable (and hopefully resistant to fading/discolouration). The general build quality and feel of the radio seem quite sturdy.If you can't decide between solar radios, DAB radios (or even just portable radios in general), I would definitely reccommend this model. It is well worth the price. Over all, it's possibly the best DAB I've seen so far.

This is an awesome radio, Canadian/American consumers, heads-up the plug is European style with three prongs.

nice sound and worked well in Europe with the loss of FM in some countries