Kaito World Band AM/ FM/ SW shortwave Radio, KA1101

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding value...
Review: The performance you get in this product restores some validity to the free market system, in my mind. Bang for the buck. Features are top of the line. Price is actually cheap for the quality you recieve. If you want a top performing, inexpensive reciever, this is exactly that.

Rating:
Summary: A real value!
Review: I completely concur with reviewers of this set (and of the somewhat more expensive 1102, which one reviewer said was actually less sensitive than the 1101). I purchased this unit on the basis of reviews, figuring, hey, eighty bucks, what can I lose? I like to listen to KIOS FM 91.5 Omaha, here in Lincoln, to get their repeat of BBC at midnight, but the signal on my clock radio is sporadic at best, completely at the mercy of atmospherics and adjacent stations, 4 X 3 on some nights, 0 X 0 on others. This unit dials it in and nails it, really five by five all nghts. And at this price, I'm thinking of a second one just to carry with in car and on my bike for mobile SWL. I mean, for eighty it comes with stereo earbuds, external antenna, NiH rechargeables, power supply, protecto-pouch, and a manual that (for the most part) sounds as if it was actually reviewed by a native English speaker (I do miss the inadvertent hilarity of non-idiomatic translations, though. "You are please to operate the sound-wheel for most pleasing of music", that sort of thing).

But watch the product description above. I think some 1102 text got mixed up here ("...With single side band (SSB) reception, the radio will transmit with a minimal amount of interference...") as this receiver is not designed to receive SSB.

The only irritation is that it turns on in timer mode (99 minutes and it automatically shuts off, even on the AC PS.) You can deselect the auto-shutoff, but only for that particular power-up. Shut it off and you go through the whole rigamarole again. Okay, it's not Sisyphus, but it seems an odd design quirk. I'm recently returned to SWL after a long hiatus (my last receiver was a National HRO-60, which apparently refers to the weight) and while there are obviously better receivers on the market, I can't imagine a better value than this set, especially for starters.

Rating:
Summary: The Ultimate Circular Firing Squad
Review: Recently purchased the Kaito KA1101 shortwave portable radio through Amazon, and have never been so negatively amazed by any purchase I've ever made. All I can think is that the radio and its instruction booklet were devised as some sort of revenge by the Chinese. It is torture from the moment you try to charge the batteries, and it goes downhill from there. The radio comes equipped with a seemingly endless array of controls which all countermand eachother, and goofy non-gramatical explanations which defy logic, would be hysterically funny as a skit on Jon Stewart's Daily Show, except for the fact that this is a radio which presumably you bought in order to listen to it. I'm a commercial pilot with a multi-engine air transport rating, and I couldn't begin to figure it out. An absolute disaster, both in engineering and documentation (if you could call it that).


Rating:
Summary: A Lot of Radio for the Size
Review: The Kaito 1101, since "replaced" by the Kaito 1102 and, even more recently, the Kaito 1103, differs only in small ways. The volume control is a spin dial, no buttons, but beyond that it's the same radio. In fact here in LA I can get the weak 103.1 FM on my Kaito 1101 but I can't get it in very well on my Kaito 1102, leading me to believe that quality control tends to bring variability. I've also heard from friends in the radio industry that the 1103, which gets stuck in certain frequency zones, is a pain in the [...] to use. So for a small PLL synthesized dual-conversion radio, you're getting top quality for half the price in the Kaito 1101. If size isn't a factor and you don't need presets, you'll get even greater reception with the Tecsun BLC 2000, which is a superior version of its more expensive, bug-plagued clone, the Grundig S350. But for portability and presets, the Kaito 1101 is the best of its kind, better, for example, than the more expensive Sangean 505 and 606, and just as good as the more expensive Sony 7600.

Rating:
Summary: Kaito fine
Review: This radio has a lot of pulling power on the SW bands for a radio at this price, and I tried a few in this price range. It has a nice tone for a small radio and is surprisingly well-built. The instructions are in Chinglish, but it helped me figure out most of the functions with little trouble.