I have had this little radio for a while and have not really paid much attention to it. After watching your video, I decided to fire it up and have a look around. I found the AM band amazing; it was picking up stations that my Grunding Satelit 750 and Tecsun PL-990X couldn't hear at all. Made me wonder why the hell did I pay so much money for the other two, 😅 👍👍
Madam, thank you for this content. I listen to this radio from it all the time. It is excellent and has a very small defect in that it does not cover a short wave length of 11 meters. Other than that defect, it is a wonderful radio for the price. Omar from yemen
I just bought this radio a couple of days ago, i think is just a danm good radio for the price. the recording feature i tested and records in stereo ONLY when you have the headphones attached, from FM or AUX. If you use it with speaker only records in mono. Other issue i seen is with the AUX, the channels are switched, so if you are connecting with RCA for example you can correct that very easy, but with audio jacks, it's another story. Beside that is pretty good radio for the price. Good review!
Bought this little dude to keep in the car for adventures & emergency purposes. Had a lot of fun with it today, and what a great sound for an inexpensive little radio!
I added a Fiio E7 DAC to the headphone output. The change was incredible. The sound was perfect. Pair this radio with a good DAC and you have great sound.
Its a great radio. I have one and highly recommend it. On the Short Wave side of things, you'll need an external antena to get decent reception. But, on AM and FM, the reception is excellent.
The tab on the plastic thing on the strap fits into a slot on the back of the radio to prop it up a little bit for a better viewing angle sitting on a table.
I have one...I like it too. Especially the great sound that comes out of the small speaker. Two things I think would make this a better radio: 1. Make it so the radio can play while it charges the battery via USB. Currently, it refuses to play the radio when it is charging. 2. Make the antenna thicker so a C. Crane style retractable SW antenna would clamp onto it. Currently, the antenna is too thin to clamp onto it securely. I wrapped a paper clip tightly around it at the base so I could use my C. Crane Shortwave Reel antenna.
I’m the person in charge of Retekess of eBay. Regarding that the radio station cannot be used in USB charging mode, you can enter my channel. There is an operation video to solve this problem. Thank you for your support to Retekess
@@retekessebay7662 I have had one for a few years and like it. One thing that really makes this radio stay in the drawer is noise from the lcd entering the am section of the radio. It needs a grounded screen plate/foil behind the lcd. Noise level is so high that it mostly makes sw unusable. Searched and found the video you taked about but why is it age restricted ?
@@migsvensurfing6310 I’m not good at operating RU-vid video settings, I don’t know how to watch without setting age Can you email me and elaborate on your question? We have not received similar feedback for the time being. You know, many people don’t like to share their feelings.
@@retekessebay7662 Hi. According to the information from Retekess in Amazon customers questions, a microphone can be plugged into “line in” jack to record from external microphone. Ive tried several microphones with ts and trs jacks... no way to get this radio working with an external microphone :( Maybe an amplified signal is needed, anyway, no info about this from Retekess. Could you please help me with this? Thanks in advance. Regards!
Great to keep in the car or bug out bag. I tend to buy cheapish items and have in different places and then have a good one close by. We'll done DJ Ria :)
Thank you Ria, wow, what a comprehensive review, my compliments. I have a Tecsun PL-880 (awesome radio) for swl but want a small cheap pocketable radio for am emergency purposes. Subscribed, and bought one. Thanks!
Be careful when using earphone and aux jacks, do not push the jacks in all the way, Tecsun products are the same. This is a mild inconvenience, I have two of these they work great but the earphone and AUX sockets no longer work so exercise care.
In a nutshell I am pleasantly pleased with the overall sound quality of the Retekess V-115! The mp3 player is adequate! It has AM coverage with FM & the FM is in stereo via headphones! Shortwave is average... Thanks...
The newer version of the Retekess V-115 has a major refinement in thatt it now has 320 bit MP3 recording where the earlier model only had 128 bit recording!
I make one voice recording to the memory card saying, "memory cards is playing" to remind you to press the pause button. Otherwise I would only record emergency radio announcements, or instructions, which is why I bout this radio. I would like other digitasl receivers, like the Tecsun, to have the ability to record as well.
One of this radio's hidden features is the ability to tune in to VHF/UHF frequency. To access it, tune to any AM or SW frequency, then press and hold the REC button to begin recording. Next, press the AM/FM button and then the MODE button. This will allow you to tune to the VHF frequency corresponding to the AM or SW frequency you selected. You can listen to frequencies ranging from 52 to 218.5 MHz. And after tuning to VHF press any number
I should note that the Micro SD card reader feature when you hook this up to your computer is VERY SLOW. Yeah, not recommended unless you have no other option. It works, but you will wait for a while. But one more feature: This is a USB SPEAKER! Yup, if your laptop has tiny speakers, this will let you drive it via the USB cord.
I have one an use it during my Side projects and the Stock battery last at least 6hrs of playing time before it will stop working.. So overall I feel its a good portable FM Radio. California USA
Aloha Ria, I actually enjoyed watching this video and broke out my HAPPY FM STERO/AM/SW DSP Receiver CS-106 that I paid like $18 years ago. I also have a Sangean ANT 60 Portable SW 23’ Antenna that I attach to the antenna of my SW receiver. Works well and still available on eBay but my Happy CS-106 could not find anymore. So I will follow your link and buy this one for $18.99, which is over $2 cheaper than my eBay app. Thanks!
I was the second person in the past hour that purchased this radio but your seller link wouldn’t ship to PO Boxes and when I changed my address, wouldn’t ship to Hawaii but I was able to buy it on eBay for only $22.
For am and sw this radio has a built in ferrite wire coil antenna. So you need to turn the radio toward thr broadcast station. I dont think the extendible antenna is for anything more than fm. I could be wrong.
I should be getting mine mailed this weekend i am excited for it! Currently using a XHDATA D-328 & i really like it alot but my dog chewed off the faceplate ugh
I bought two pieces, one works on the battery as well as without and on the power supply, while the other works on the power supply but only when the battery is present. The second problem that appears after a few days of use is that after some time on a given radio station there is such a noise that drowns out the sound.
4:48 Looks like a passive radiator! I have NEVER seen that before in such a cheap unit - cool! Only seen some more expensive ones have a tiny bass reflex port.
Thank you. I have had that radioo for some years but its lcd induces a lot of noise into the am section making it mostly unusable on especially sw. Looking forward for part two... outdoor test am/sw.
There's a mod that involves taking it apart and shielding the LCD with copper foil there's a vid on how to do it improves it immensely look for the comparison vid after mod comparing it to the XHDATA 808
@@ashab1 Isn't there a "ground" to be made into the copper shield to the circuit board somewhere? I am under the impression that it is RFI noise due to the fact that it is a DOT MATRIX LCD? Digital LCD is much quieter & the standard as a display?
The price is good and it would be great for someone vacationing who wants music and news. But for wider use, including disasters, not being able to tune in SSB makes it of little value. Apart from broadcasting, almost everything on HF is SSB. There are portable radios that do tune SSB, although probably not this cheap.
For the average person listening to broadcast radio, AM (including DSB SW AM) and FM are all they need. I agree that SSB is more useful for ham radio and those kinds of use. But you're not getting a radio with SSB in this price range at all. If you know of one, link it because I'd like to review it. The cheapest SSB radio I've seen is the Tecsun PL-330 which is $80 ($75 if you have it shipped from China). I may review that one as well.
@@n2rj I'm much older than you, and I remember when there was plenty of AM on SW including ships, airplanes, Ham radio, and numerous government and some private broadcasting. Back then not having SSB wasn't much of a loss, but now even with SSB there is just a few % of the former activity and at best 1% of AM transmissions so an AM-only SW receiver is of little use.
@@P_RO_ I wouldn’t say so at all. Actually I was a SWL in the 1980s and 1990s. There is still plenty of AM shortwave around and in fact there are broadcasters in the USA, such as WBCQ that didn’t exist back then. It is less than before but I wouldn’t say an AM only SW radio is useless. That said if you have the money for SSB, get SSB. I will be showing a BFO that you can use to make any radio receive SSB.
@@n2rj My SWL days go back to the mid 70's and began when Dad occasionally brought out his Hallicrafters which we listened to together from the mid 60's. With the internet coning of age allowing international "broadcasts" to be done at a fraction of the cost while still reaching almost everyone saw most of the national broadcasts switch to online only, and saw the scheduled radio broadcasts become fewer and shorter. SW broadcasting went from trying to reach the whole world to being aimed only at current and former colonial areas, and timed accordingly. It was easy to 'catch' 50 different nations on the air in a week of evening listening. I logged over 100 and had QSL's from many of them. There aren't even 50 nations broadcasting internationally now on the SW bands. Ham's have almost abandoned AM as well since SSB gear became widely factory-made and common in our shacks. Even 'pirate' radio has waned significantly, and all the commercial messaging stations have gone to digital modes or satellite. The few private broadcasters are mostly religious oriented, few have anything interesting going on anymore. You can still find something to hear but it used to be hard to not find something interesting and different. It used to be hard to not become bored with what you could find; now it's such that my listening sessions usually falter in under an hour unless listening on SSB where Hams and maritime traffic can be found. If all you have is AM SW it's better than nothing but not by much; normal broadcast bands (MW and FM) are nearly as good. If your goal is like Ham "contesting' just to see how many stations you can hear, AM SW will still deliver there, and at an equal rate of being of value in any other way. Yes you can still hear far-away stations but there's no longer much worth listening to. As someone with a deep love of radio it's been heartbreaking but the world changes and moves on to other things; the 'golden days' of radio are over and save for specific purposes radio is dying of old age. An off-board BFO is technically interesting, but begs the question of why when SSB RCVRs are cheap and readily available, and probably at an equal or lower cost with less fuss involved. If you have another superhet RCVR then you already have an off-board BFO if you know what to do with it; harmonic interference isn't always your enemy. It's more of a 'neat trick' than a useful technique but it does actually work when it's all you've got to work with. 73 and happy airwaves to you!
I have an audiomax srw-710. It's exactly the same at this retekess v115. I had no idea it had shortwave functionality for the first 5 years i owned it i bought it because i could record and play back sounds via the SD card (use it as a digital cassette recorder, we wanted to use it to drive halloween spooky sounds outside in our yard!)
I am able to play music while charging the battery on my device. But with the micro SD card inserted, my Win 10 PC does not detect it as a memory device, until I started the Device Manager stuff to scan for it . Then press the Power button to access it.
Hi from Spain. Thanks for your review. Ive recently bought this radio and is really good, but I have a question, hope you can help me. According to the information of Retekess, A microphone can be plugged into “line in” jack to record from external microphone. Ive tried several microphones with ts and trs jacks... no way to get this radio working with an external microphone :( Maybe an amplified signal is needed, anyway, no info about this from Retekess. Did you tried this? I would love some help. Thanks in advance. Regards!
That plastic is also a kick stand. I heard this radio has another 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
This radio sounds really really good. trouble with playing music on sd card, its complaining about the formatting. I've tried several different formats. no luck. any suggestions. love the radio
Hi Ria. A question : How much of a reception bump can you expect to get if you use a long wire clipped on to the antenna? A hard question to answer definitively but just wondering if it’s worth getting a long wire for this radio.
hi, i bought v115 a few days ago. radio is good but when I put sd card screen says WAITING... 1 seconds than screen says CAN NOT FIND DEVICE. I used 2gb and 16gb sd cards. both of them is working on laptop and on my dslr camera. What can I do? please send me a solution
Been searching to see if it will read exFAT formatted sdcards, can't find out anywhere, but that could be the problem. Reader in my car only accepts Fat32 not exFAT so limits the amount of files it'll hold :-(
I believe it is meant to use the memory and advance that way. But, I would guess...that if you erase the memory...the advance will go manually with out it. Otherwise...direct entry is the only way I know of.
