Rating: 
Summary: A very nice entry model shortwave radio!
Review: I recently purchased the Sangean ATS 606AP and have been very pleased with the quality. I live an area with fair to poor radio reception but the Sangean ATS 606AP has providen very reliable reception on AM, FM and shortwave stations. Presets and channel tuning is very intuitive. Shortwave reception is especially impressive. A minor complaint, the clock radio features (alarm and sleep timer) are somewhat confusing to operate. Overall, this is a high quality shortwave radio, and provides quite alot of dollar value.
Rating: 
Summary: Sangean ATA 606A - How nice it is.
Review: I use the radio to listen to FM/AM especially at night to fall asleep or to listen to when I wake up. So the must have feature is a sleep timer and station recall. All one does is hold down the Power button and the timer cycles between 60, 45, 30 minutes so one can do it the dark. Audio is great and the three AA batteries last several days with daily and night use. Shortwave works but you have to sit close to a window and use the supplied reel antenna to log more than a few stations. The antenna comes with the radio; don't order the accessory antenna. The power adaptor has long prongs and sags when plugged in. Probably works better overseas, maybe.
Rating: 
Summary: Did not work!
Review: I was excited by this item, and carefully chose it on merit, and it did well considering its price and strength of competition. However, when it arrived, it didn't work - wouldn't turn on, with either the batteries or the 110V supply. This is a shame as it looked so good, but whoever tested it didn't do a good job, so I will be buying another make instead
Rating:
Summary: Did not work!
Review: I was excited by this item, and carefully chose it on merit, and it did well considering its price and strength of competition. However, when it arrived, it didn't work - wouldn't turn on, with either the batteries or the 110V supply. This is a shame as it looked so good, but whoever tested it didn't do a good job, so I will be buying another make instead
Rating:
Summary: Real Good Radio
Review: I've been a Short Wave Listener since 1973 and a licensed Ham since 1991 and I have never owned a receiver that can match the performance of this one! The main high point for me is the sensitivity. This little gem, with it's short telescoping whip really brings in the HF signals. It performs like other receivers connected to long-wire or random-wire external antennas. Another point is the ease of operation. The control buttons are straight-forward, with minimal use of "dual-function" controls. It has direct-frequncy entry, as well as "up - down" tuning/ scanning functions. One feature I would like to see, however, would be a BFO for reception of single sideband communications. I'm generally not a fan of small radios, but the performance of this one (especially for the price) makes it a welcome addition to my other equipment. I highly recommend this one!
Rating:
Summary: Small Wonder
Review: I've been listening to shortwave (or world band, as it's called now) for about 15 years, and am awash in multi-band radios. After some friends decided that there was room for just ONE more, I received the Sangean 606AP as a gift, and have been thanking them ever since. Like everything else, the Sangean has it's good and bad points. It's compact size is just right for the pocket on the motorcycle jacket. The audio quality, although non-adjustable, is very easy to listen to for extended periods of time, and greatly improves with a pair of stereo headphones. The F.M. band displays excellent stereo characteristics, and the sensitivity means capturing stations 75+ miles away is a common occurence. The mediumwave (A.M.) band is a little above average, with great daytime reception, and nighttime listening being almost too good - dozens of stations all coming in at once. Detuning the frequency by +1/-1 khz can usually help. I was blown away by the shortwave performance on a radio this size, and using the power adapter over the batteries, the performance increases greatly. The major stations sound like they are broadcasting from up the street, and sometimes I have to lower the antenna or toggle the local/DX switch to avoid overloading. Smaller stations can be called up quite well, and tuning up or down by 1 khz can help to remove some interference from nearby signals. A wide/narrow setting would be a great addition, as would SSB for grabbing some utility frequencies, but the plusses like low power consumption with a 9 step battery indicator, lighted display, dozens of easy-to-use presets,2 clocks, travel lock, +5/+1 tuning, and a nice travel case, make this a GREAT radio for globetrotting, or having the world on your nightstand. I highly recommend this radio to anyone wanting to fish into the fray of world band radio and come up with an excellent catch.
Rating:
Summary: Exceeded my expectations!!
Review: In this day of the internet, connecting people worldwide, effortlessly, I bought the 606 with a bit of nostalgia in mind. I wanted to have a good old protable transistor radio, with a speaker, that I could also use with earphones. It's amazing how much information is traveling through the air, from all over the world, that is just waiting for you to find it. With the 606, I got that, and then some. The 606 is small...not pocket-small, but very easy to take with you. The AM and FM sensitivities are great. I'm pulling in FM stations that I can't get on my car radio. At night, I pulled in AM stations from Indiana, Buffalo, Montreal, and Boston, from my home in a NYC suburb. The bonus was shortwave capabilities. I already own a Grundig Yachtboy 400, which has better sound, but is much bigger. I knew the 606 had shortwave, but I didn't expect much from it. Was I pleasantly suprised. The radio covers the major shortwave bands, but has some gaps that the Grundig YB400 includes, albeit, they are fairly useless bands anyway. The 606 also covers long wave (LW), but from what I know about that, there isn't much in the way of regular broadcasting in that range. Just signal beacons and stuff. Pretty useless to me. From a usability standpoint, the 606 is a dream. I like the tuning and preset capabilities much more than the YB400. I find myself constantly reshuffling the presets, and looking for new stations. I'm using it for shortwave much more often than I had intended. Also, I'm using it for AM, which I would rarely ever use in the past. There's alot of good stuff out there. The unit comes with a nice case, ac adapter, and a reel-type external shortwave antennae. Battery life has been very good so far. Well, as I said at the begining, I got the 606 for the nostalgia of a simple AM/FM "transistor" radio. It is that, and more. It is simple to use, elegant, and of excellent construction. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this radio to anyone, and would surely buy it again.
Rating:
Summary: Great radio
Review: It's the best radio under 200$ I've ever seen. Great SW reception. All features you ever dream are available with this magic machine. The adapter enclosed are a multivoltage one, the best choice for travellers.
Rating:
Summary: The best radio for the money.
Review: The first thing I noticed about the ATS-606 was how GREAT the FM receiver is. This is an amazingly sensitive and selective FM radio. Many stations that usually require the radio's antenna be fully extended came in loud and clear WITHOUT the antenna being extended at all on this radio. I have used this radio at work, inside a building, and while other people's radios were struggling to pick up stations, my Sangean had no problem. I decided to really put the FM section of this radio to the test. I have a very low power FM transmitter connected to my CD player at home so I can listen to my CDs anywhere in my home and out in the back yard on any FM radio tuned to 107.9mhz. It's only about 250 milliwatts (1/4 of a watt) so it doesn't go very far. Even within the house, there are many dead spots that require a fully extended antenna to receive it. The ATS-606 easily and clearly picked up the low power transmitter on 107.9 mhz and, in most cases, I didn't even have to extend the antenna. The mediumwave (AM) section of the receiver is excellent, too. I pick up stations in Canada on 800khz and 900khz with no problem. My other radios do too, but, the Sangean does it a little bit better. If you live in America, you can forget about longwave reception except for the occassional radio beacon and possible (though not probable) long range reception of a European or Asian broadcast station. Still, having longwave reception is a plus if you plan on traveling to countries that use longwave for broadcast stations. The real reason I bought this radio was for shortwave reception. I wanted something very small that still had decent audio, and that is another quality this radio has. This radio has been rated the best sounding portable for it's size so, I wanted to give it a try. I am extremely pleased with the shortwave reception of this radio. I have three other shortwave radios at home and, in spite of it's size, the Sangean performs as well and sometimes better. The Sangean also has some nice features such as a clock radio function that lets you awaken to radio or a very nice alarm that gradually increases in volume instead of scaring you out of a deep sleep. It also has an adjustable sleep timer allowing you to set the radio to turn off in 60, 45, 30 or 15 minutes. There are 54 presets for the radio; 18 for FM. 18 for shortwave, 9 for AM and 9 for longwave. I would have preferred more for AM since I do a lot of AM listening. There is also a feature that will allow the radio to scan for, and automatically program stations into the presets for you on FM, AM and LW and will arrange them according to signal strength. I did this just for the fun of trying it but, you will most likely end up with a lot of stations you won't like. Another feature is "memory scan" which will scan your presets and stop at each station for about four seconds until you press another button. As good as this radio is, I couldn't give it 5 stars for two reasons. The first one is minor. Shortwave utility stations such as ships at sea, radio fax, telegraph and aviation use a transmission mode called sideband. This radio cannot receive their trasmissions. The other problem is a MAJOR one for a person like me who likes to manually scan the shortwave bands. On this radio, instead having a seperate scan and manual tune function, the manual tune automatically goes into a scan mode when pressed for more than a few seconds. To make matters worse, the receiver audio is completely muted when this happens. This makes bandscanning almost impossible. "Bandscanning" is the practice of manually scanning sections of the shortwave and broadcasts bands and listening for weak signals in between the strong signals. It's not possible to bandscan with this radio nor any radio that mutes the audio unless you have the patience to hit the button repeatedly and advance only 1khz or 5khz at a time. Besides pushing you to insanity, the tuning buttons would most likely fail prematurely, and probably the day after the warranty expires. I almost sent the radio back because of this but, I liked the radio so much overall that I decided I could live with it. I can always bandscan with my other radios if necessary. Even with this major design flaw, this is an exceptional radio. It has great FM (stereo with headphones), continuous coverage from 153khz to 29,999khz, great sound for it's size, a 1 khz fine tune option, good battery life from it's 3AA cells and many great features. If it didn't have that bandscan problem, Sangean would have had an almost perfect radio.
Rating:
Summary: Nice little radio
Review: The Sangean ATS 606AP is a nice little radio for the money. I find it particularly useful for listening in bed. It is a good performer in this area of the world.
While it is a good value with free shipping, as far as I can determine this radio was never priced as high as [money]... [I] review it favorably... Passport rates it as the best buy in a pocket model.
It is a basic SW receiver that is easy to operate. I am glad that I bought it.
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