She revealed that the audio IC is a D2822M. Radio IC - 16 pins - was not identified. Anyone know what it is? Speaker is 3.5 inch round (metal construction) with a decent sized magnet. Tuning is achieved by a 100K variable resistor which lends itself to an easy modification to create a radio with 4 or 5 presets (as I proved to myself recently when assembling an FM radio kit).
The V115 is a steal for its price. I bought it for college and made some great memories listening to community radio at night. It's also a passable aux speaker for being with friends.
I have just bought the Retekess TR604. Good reception and strong, clear sound. I don't understand some people criticizing its bad AM reception , my other radios ( Panasonic 2400, Philips TAR2506 and Grundig Music 60 ) don't do better on AM.
One interesting thing about the V115 is that if you plug it into a PC it turns into a USB sound card and plays PC sounds. Good if you need to prop up the sound from a laptop.
It would be interesting to know if Retekess actually watched this review and might make some of the mentioned improvements. I suspect they have at least watched it. The audio from that PR12 radio was really crisp, almost too much so!
Dad has the 2nd radio, identical but different brand & it's in white colour. The aux input is sort of a mystery, instructions manual claimed aux socket is shared with the "type mini-B" charger port, but you gotta buy a "mini-B" converter to 3.5mm male/female cable to work. High volume consumes battery power. Lastly, the LED light will light up (very dim) during charging but will not switch off, if fully charged. That's all I could share.
Nice string of “Rs” in that title. Good patient review of several radios. Your reference to the GE Superradio reminded me of how great that one is, hard to find a genuine one. I operate a Part 15 station here in my area, on AM, I purchased a Panasonic 2400D for my daughter to listen in. The large AM FM radio looks very much like the one I bought. It also has a very good receiver. Thanks for posting.
I love the look of it, last SD camera I used was a Sony DVD handycam from early 2000s but the quality of videos that produced is way worse. I'm not sure if that was a restriction of the dvd format or the camera itself
You can never have too much radios to chose from. However personally i'm not comfortable with built in LiPo batteries and all digital inputs for volume and channel browsing. Yeah, FLAC, OGG and WAV would be nice to have on one of such radios that also function as mediaplayers. The red LED display really is pretty neat. Doesn't blind you when you use it in dark environments or at night. Recording some radio program on the micro SD card would be also great (like on the V115). Preferably as PCM WAV. The voice recording feature is pretty useful and sounds actually usable.
I have a transistor Am Fm i got from radio shack years ago that takes a 9 volt battery and it's still chugging along just fine . my only problem is i notice that more and more things are being made to take 2 or 3 double A or triple A batteries , are they going to stop making 9 volt batteries and if so is there a way I could alter the circuits to accept a double A ?
@@howardwayne3974 Yeah chinese made radios are notorious for their weird nonstandard 4,5 Volt power usage… And yea… either AAA or AA. And about your Radio.... mhmm I dunno, maybe it could work with battery adapters. In a 9 volt block are literally 6x 1,5V AAA cells inside. So technically there should be a re-usable battery adaptor that houses AAA batteries and use it as a 9 Volt block.
11:00 I have a similar all-in-one portable (in the shape of a car) with red LED's and a mini-USB port. It came with a cable with mini-USB male on one end, and the other end it splits to full USB (for charging) and 3.5mm male (for aux input). It seems the mini-USB port uses the pins normally used for data lines as signal input for left and right, and the audio ground is shared with the power ground. Your USB cable seems to be split at the mini-USB end as well.
Retekess is a company that one really WANTS to like. They have some interesting radios. The problem is that the radios just come up short. Like they don’t finish them. ITS THE LITTLE DETAILS. People WILL pay for a better radio. (( a good example: XHData/Radiwow. Two great radios, people can’t buy enough of.)) Put more thought into your electronics, and finish them. Higher quality radios that perform, rather than being JUST ADEQUATE. A bunch of bells and whistles, ( tons of extras), but don’t work very well when the radio doesn’t perform very well. 📻🙂
David Piçarra Tecsun has been making radios for Eton/Grundig for a couple of decades. I have some 11 Tecsun radios. They really do work hard to bring forth great radios, BUT, my point is that XHData is relatively NEW to the World Market. I have their D-808, and it is definitely NOT “poop”. It is an excellent radio, at a good price. You may call it what you will, people cannot get enough of them. It is a radio well thought out, well executed. High quality. This is my opinion, but seems to be the opinion of many others who own a D-808. 📻🙂
I just got me a TR-604 from Amazon, partially because of this video. While I agree with you that it has good reception and sound quality, for me, a disappointing part of this radio is the build. Now, for a little less than 30 dollars, I wasn't expecting something built like an absolute tank, but I was expecting a bit more than what I got. As it stands, the radio feels very plasticky and cheap, almost more like a toy than a piece of electronic equipment. That's the one drawback I would mention to someone considering buying the TR-604.
Hi, VWestlife, I bought a TR-604 on the basis of your review and like it. I can confirm the 'crackling' with high AM modulation levels. I have a ChezRadio Part 15 station, and experimented with modulation levels up to +130% or so positive (95% negative) with a Schlockwood processor. I theorize that something about the radio's DSP is unhappy with very high positive modulation levels. The radio is perfectly fine with normal, 100% modulation. This issue may come and go as not all stations supermodulate, and for those that do, extra positive modulation varies with program material.
I heard from a trusted source, the V 115 has a secret feature, you can listen VHf and UHF, including air band try this first choose an OEM frequency for example 1225 KHZ press and hold record you must have a memory card inserted when it starts recording press FM slash AM and the mode keys that's all now tune it to 122.50 MHz it works by tuning shortwave as well the frequency is in kHz goes to VHF or UHF enjoy
My wife and I were trapped in rubble during a earthquake and we very often wondered if anyone knew there were people trapped . not only us , but others as well . someone had a cheap Chinese made Am Fm radio and we could faintly hear news broadcasts . we could hear the newscaster talking about a building being worked on and it was ours !!! That little radio gave us so much hope !!!
The AM and shortwave stations will probably come in better if you went outside away from all the wallwarts and electronics. Or even another part of the house which I have found works.
Thanks, I’ll stick with my Sony ICF-38, my only complaint is that it uses 4 AA batteries that drain mildy swiftly. But it also uses AC so no biggie, the sound is vastly superior. It does nothing else but AM and FM.
I noticed that all the Retekess radios except for the TR604 say TF Card instead of microSD card. I guess Chinese companies use TF Card instead of microSD to avoid having to pay licensing fees to the SD Association to use the name and logo.
MicroSD is a superset of TransFlash (TF). You can't get actual TF cards anymore nor the readers but the name stuck around since SanDisk never bothered keeping the trademark active. Modern SD readers can still read real TF cards as it follows the original SD spec as well as what became SDHC.
The artifacts you hear on the WKXW-FM recording is NOT MP3 compression artifacts, its their broadcast feed! Its had that metallic underwater sound to it for at least a year now. I don't know what they did to their processing chain, but it equally sounds like crap on analog FM and HD now.
Any electronic devices that have non replaceable batteries, don't expect them to last over 2-3 years. The batteries will soon be able not to hold a charge. I still have a mobile phone that I use daily that I can replace the battery and the phone is going on 7 years old, flip phone and no issues.Replaced the battery 3 times @ 6 dollars each.
Again a nice review of these receivers. I was impressed with the larger Retekess portable's reception and sound. It's interesting to see the differences in quality among receivers from the same company. I like listening to radio jingles like Jams, etc.
Thanks for the review. I have a couple of questions. Do you know if there any one of these are on the market that use AA batteries (instead of a rechargeable battery), uses regular thumb drives and displays both song title and artist? Seems everything out there that plays MP3's uses rechargeable batteries. My preference for AA batteries would be camping or during an extended power outage where recharging would be impractical. Also did you get a chance to see if the TR 604 was selective enough to pickup Philadelphia FM stations from your Central NJ location? Thanks
None that I know of. The TR604's selectivity is very good, especially on AM. It was able to distinguish nighttime skywave signals on 1690 and 1700 kHz. But it seems to have AFC on AM because if one of those signals faded out it would automatically switch to the other and vice versa.
Glad to see the review. I've made some comments on each radio. On the PR12, I agree with that, in fact I would totally pass on that. On the PR11, Nokia Cell phone batteries are very common on Chinese electronics as I have a handheld keyboard that uses a Nokia battery. Direct entry is cool, I've only seen direct entry on radios that have FM (and/or AM) as secondary functions. When you got to the AM section I would also have to pass on it too. On the V115, that's almost one I would buy, but the poor AM/SW reception and poor recording make it a pass. On the TR604 that looks more like one I'd be interested in. Since the analog dial seems to operate a digital tuner I'd be interested in seeing how the AFC handles a strong station on 104.7 and a weaker station on 104.3. Ultimately the AM issues make this a pass for me too.
The GE superadios were some of the best performing and sounding portables made although in my opinion they screwed up on the superadio 3, that version did not have the tapped loudness control, or the tweeter speaker, also that version used a varactor diode tuning system and like you said dial calibration was poor and I think that was mostly the fault of the varactor tuning system, the only improvement the 3 had was AM wideband switch, if GE would have kept all the features of the superadio 2 and added the AM wide-normal switch it would have been truly a superadio as it was the superadio 2 was the best version, also the on-off push button switch on top was a nice feature too.
I believe, and I emphasize believe, that if all you have is stereo headphones you can simply not plug them in all the way. Plug in to the first notch but not all the way in. It you push it in all the way simply pull it back a bit and the head phone will work mono.
Does anyone know of a pocket size as the PR12 mp3/ radio that uses AA or AAA batteries? Even minus the radio but mp3 playback would be nice pocket size.
Western North America still does. For example, although the Canadian Broadcast Corporation has moved most of its broadcasts to FM over the last 25 years, they have kept some of the high powered AM stations active (540, 690, and 1010), as these reach sparsely-populated rural areas.
AM and SW are still useful when you're going camping in a mountain, or if you live in a town far from the city. There are not many FM stations in these areas, the best bands are AM and SW.
Hey VWestlife, really love your videos. I'm actually in the middle of doing a project of converting VHS tapes to digital files. However, the VCR I have shows these weird black streaks on white colors. Do you have any guidance what would be a good VCR (brand?) to purchase?
I got that Retekess V115 few days ago Sucks bad in AM ,mine came defective AM only picked up internal noise I switched the antenna around inside and that made it usable But still sucks The speaker sounds pretty good But my Tecsun PL-310ET is a real radio in comparison Good MW, Great SW ,Great FM and Good LW All in a small package and the headphone output Actually sounds good unlike my V115
My Eton (Grundig) field bt radio has the same clipping distortion on AM. Its a hardware limitation of the dsp chip. When I tune off slightly by 1Khz, The soft muting reduces the audio slightly and the distortion goes. Quality improves slightly as well. I too would love to see better mp3 recording on the V115. Its a great travel radio. I use it to log and record pirate radio stations on my travels. I also noticed on the v115, if you switch it to 9Khz spacing, you can manually enter the frequency and tune in 1Khz steps. This allows you to have a fantastic audio bandwidth on AM.
Could you get WLNG.? While I enjoy that station, not too long ago, they were really old school with the time chime and crazy amounts of jingles, not to mention life to air 24/7. By the way, your AM station sounds really good. I noticed that the signal might be on the verge of overloading the receiver. That’s the nature of many AM radios. In my area 590 VOCM at 20kw just sounds awful yet 640 CBN sounds great. Just as loud as VOCM. 800 VOWR is somewhere in the middle. Anyway, thank you again for helping me blow off hours of time perusing my own geek interests, mostly broadcasting n obsession with AM Stereo. btw check out 1430 WION. They stream their signal that is sourced from their AM Stereo signal. Sounds great, but I have a feeling you know about that already.
Nice video. I guess the recording function is not meant for super hi-fi sound just an easy extra so you can let somebody hear something interesting when they can't listen live, or record an address or phone number.
Long time no see (^_-)/ Yeah I like the second radio.. I have a bunch of mp3 files which I use the Amplify plugin on Audacity to Normalize the files.. The first radio was cool too.. I listen to AM a bit as well.. You have that cool 105 station.. That's down the shore.. Yeah a cool station which I don't get too well here since I'm closer to N.Y.C... Even though I'm also in New Jersey :) Hey cool very detailed videos as always! Stay safe and keep uploading!
Just wait till you get (and restore) a Zenith Transoceanic D7000Y...will blow all that chinese stuff off the shelves with ease. Especially under a metal roof.
Is still have to find out how to move the frequency up and down in the V115. With the arrow keys i can move preset channels up and down but not frequency.
I have something very similar to the PR11 but much cheaper, and it doesn't have a brand name. It's pretty convenient for FM and MP3s, but AM and SW are almost completely useless; it creates interference on AM, and SW is so deaf that it only just barely gets WWV. Actually, seeing the display, I think it is the same thing but in a different case lol That radio seems like it would be decent depending on what it costs.... its AM performance is VERY surprising too! but I think I'll stick with my GE "mini superradio" lol. it's almost kind of fun to hear a station changing broadcast patterns too lol... when CKJH changes, it cuts off with a "thump" sound, and then fades back in.
The most annoying thing about the V115 are the presets which basically make it almost unusable. Once you program in a preset, even just one, the radio seek function cannot work anymore.So to change to a non preset station, you have to manually input it each time. Someone prove me wrong but its maddening.
Is the 128kbps limit on mp3 recordings some kind of limit imposed by record companies? 128kbps is somehow still the standard used for recording by everything from a cheap portable radio to "audiophile" hi-fi components.
I think you are right on many digital devices. VWestlife reviewed the Teac CD-A580 CD/cassette deck; its USB conversion is limited to 128 kbps MP3 because it includes a digital source (CD). In contrast, the Tascam 202 MkVII and Teac W-1200 cassette decks provide output for USB conversion at CD-quality (48kHz/16-bit PCM) as the source is analog.
17:38 Retekess - "Let's make a radio that looks kinda like a GE Superadio" - "OK, which one ? There were 3" - "The really ugly one. The one that collectors only get, to complete the collection but rarely switch on... The one that makes people look at and think "What were GE thinking ?" .. you know, THAT one... The one that was rebranded to RCA that they bollocksed up" - "ohhh, THAT one.... shall we make ours even uglier ???"
