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: 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: Excellent FM sound from a small radio
Summary: 5 Stars
I listen to a lot of radio, and sound quality is VERY important to me (I'm one of those LP-only guys). When my old Aiwa CR-LD100 started acting up, I looked hard for a radio-only replacement that had good sound. I tried several units in person and I scoured the web for things like "best sound fm portable" etc. But with digital players being all the rage, there were very few high-quality pocket tuners available.
After readng the reviews on the DT-210V, I decided to chance it. While I would have preferred a smaller unit, the reviews for the DT-110 didn't emphasize sound quality as they did with the larger DT-210V. And sound quality is everything for me.
Now that I have it, I can tell you the FM sound quality of the DT-210V is excellent for its size. Using the Etymotic ER4P and with Bass Boost on, I get a warm, rich, tone and a surprisingly wide, deep, and convincing soundstage. The amount of detail is striking. Also, it easily drives the inefficient Etymotics as loudly as you could wish, no headphone amp required.
FM reception is very good, with drift free performance on stations 50 miles away. Weak stations produce some hiss but turning the mono switch clears that up and makes for an acceptable mono experience.
I don't want to mislead other audiophiles out there -- of course it's not as good a sound as my 1964 Fisher 500C tube receiver with full-sized Grado headphones, nor does it have as fine a reception! But it is astounding, nonetheless, given its size.
AM reception is far better than any pocket radio I've had but it is especially directional. When you are "aiming" it properly, you'll get very clear, static-free reception, sometimes from quite far away, hundreds of miles.
Again, I don't want to mislead the DXers out there. This is not even close in performance to my Sony ICF-SW7600GR for DXing broadcast AM. But it's 1/3 the price and 1/8 the volume of the Sony and damned good for casual AM listening.
The user interface is the best I've seen on any radio (My Sony's interface still confuses me). To tune: press quickly for manual, hold a half second for search. To set memory: tune, press memo, select location, press memo. To recall memory: press recall, select memory location up or down. This was all second nature inside two minutes.
Regarding the little speaker, I thought I would "put up with it" in order to get the superior tuner section. But it's really quite useful for listening to AM without headphones.
All in all, this was the best $50 I've spent in a long time. I am thoroughly enjoying this excelent product. If sound quality is important to you, get one.
Customer Review: Excellent Pocket Radio!!
Summary: 5 Stars
I have had this radio for almost 2 years now and like it so much I thought I would write a review. First of all, I looked at Sangean based on other reviews that praised the great reception and quality build. Specifically, it needed to:
1. Fit in my pocket
2. Offer am/fm and TV bands
3. Easy to change batteries and use AA or AAA batteries
4. Have a good usable external speaker for use at home or hotel, etc.
I am a walker. I walk 2-3 miles a day. Sometimes I might even jog. The DT-210V fits easily in my front shorts or pants pocket and comes with a long enough set of earbuds that reach my head and work fine. It also has a "lock" feature that I really like. Tune the 210, slide the lock slide tab on the back, and slip it back in your pocket. Now as I walk, I can reach in and adjust the volume without having to worry about upsetting the frequency settings. Just keep on walking! The buttons all have a nice feel to them and are easy to adjust and use. Overall, the construction is sturdy and functional. The built-in external speaker works well enough to use outside on the back porch or hotel room. The batteries last long enough. I don't know exactly how many hours but it has not been an issue. AAA batteries are cheap, either alkalines or NiMh rechargeables. I don't really use the memory functions as I usually have only a couple of local favorites that I tune to.
I might add that one of my hobbies is amateur radio (HAM radio)so I think I know a little about what to expect from a small receiver package like the 210. To me, the "PLL Synthesized Receiver" feature of the 210 means that once tuned to a good signal the 210 will not fade in and out as the user moves about. The result is great reception and audio. I have used smaller mini radios/mp3 units that, while smaller and maybe "cooler" just didn't offer the performance over the AM/FM/TV bands.
If I needed two of them, I wouldn't hesitate to buy another. I might just buy one to put into service when (if ever) this one bites the dust. I also don't know of another unit, Sangean or otherwise, that works as well. If someone does, let me know.... I hope this helps!