Very nice. Its good they still do them radios. At xmas time I buy a few of the pocket radios and give them to some of the homeless in the city I pass by. Radio always makes you feel as if you have company when you might not. PS I love the radio in the background. I used to have the AR 88D radio and that sucker was 52kg lol Take a dam hernia moving it.
Thanks, Andre, for your video on the new XHDATA D-220 pocket radio indeed! The more I see this radio the more I believe that for the price point & its reception capabilities its worth buying!
Jay Allen's review says the D-220 tunes in 1 kHz steps on medium wave, so no need to switch between 9 and 10 kHz steps. And hence, no separate US and rest-of-the-world models.
@@joewoodchuck3824 True! But this is a DSP-based radio, so 10 kHz steps would not work perfectly in countries that use 9 kHz steps, or the other way round.
I’ve bought a lot of these XHDATA radios recently; they’re fun and cheap. I just got the 220 in yellow, and the led power light is so bright it illuminates the top of the radio ad well as the band window. Thanks for doing these and other videos
Hey André, I've been seeing this radio being the new talk of the town, nice to see you getting it. Not surprised you chose green, I know that you have a thing for green radios since the R-909 😁 All the good reviews I've seen plus the the comments you made to me made my decision and I have one from Amazon FR on order now 😆 ... oh yeah, I really needed yet another radio for sure.
@@F4LDT-Alain Hi Alain, I haven't compared them side by side, but the D-220 really has very good sound. I noticed it immediately. Will do a side-by-side with the D-368 at some point.
That D-220 really looks like a "you never know what you're gonna hear" radio 😅 From what I see, the tuning dial is hardly any reference, and a smallest touch of tuning control (encoder?) will change a station. You'll be lucky every time you find something enjoyable to listen to, knowing you may not find it again! 😂 On this note, d 13:40 unno if it would encourage the aforementioned BBC to expand their SW airtime back, but still will be fun whene er you catch them :) If I were to purchase this radio, I would be looking to push its performance to the limit 🤓 I'd start with replacing its telescopic whip with a longer one, or just attaching a length of wire to it. In fact, that's what I'd been doing for many years since I was a child & DXing on all bands really hooked me. I would've wrapped lots & lots of scrap wire to a telescopic whip on my boombox to listen to a very weak & noisy pop music station 60km away. Today, an XHDATA D-808 can get it clearly with RDS already on its stock whip, depending on a spot I place it on... Too bad their programming had worsened inverse-proportionally; now half of their playlist is stuff from 10-20 years back 😒 BTW if you want to try again for Pretoria FM, tune to it first on another radio, and see if you can find the same signal on the D-220. That's the only way :)
Hi Arnie, it certainly is a "you never know what you will hear" radio! To me that's part of the attraction of this little radio, I am actually beginning to like it quite a bit. Really reminds me of my DXing days when I was a teenager and used something similar. I tried with a wire on this one and it works, with no overloading. Very many more signals appear. You just need to be very, very patient when tuning, then it actually manages to separate the signals very well and you can hear many different signals. I wonder who the target buyers are for this one, it is certainly not aimed at DXers. But you can DX with it. Sounds to me like you have been an FM DXer all your life! Trying to find remote stations on your boombox. Sounds like fun. About Pretoria FM, I actually do sometimes use a strong radio as a reference when I test new radios, I just didn't do it here. I still want to get Pretoria FM on the D-220, I will keep trying.
Nice radio. But what they need is a secondary fine tuning knob. I’ve seen them used on other radios and you roughly tune in with the main control then fine tune with the fine tuning knob.
Indeed, those fine-tuning knobs can help a lot! But I think this radio is so small already, there is probably no space for that, internally and externally.
I am a big radio person, I rather listen to a radio than watch television 📺, it's better to have a analog one because I can pick up stations in between that are further out, ..
@@ditto1958 Yes, it is lighter than what it looks like on Amazon. I expected it to be similar in colour to the Tecsun R-909 that I show in this video. But I still like it.
I envy you for having local AM stations. Here in Germany they shut them all down a few years ago, at the order of the Government -._- So the only thing i can hear on AM now (unless my neighbors sabotage it with their freaking Powerline Adapters for their internet, instead of using LAN cables) are foreign stations. A lot of them sounding middle eastern, russian and sometimes when the conditions are good, hungarian and even english. But english is just talking about sports so it's nothing interesting at all. Absolute Radio in England used to broadcast on AM too but it seems they ceased their AM service and only push their online stuff.... Love the color options XHDATA provides. I may pick up one of these as well as an everyday carry radio for emergencies. Because at least this one runs on AA Batteries. Something i wish the XHDATA D-608WB would too.
The one nice thing about not having local MW stations is that it is easier to DX distant MW stations. There are no strong local MW stations in the way :-) We actually only have very few local MW stations left in South Africa. Here in Johannesburg there are three, and in Cape Town there are three. That's all. You might be able to hear even more distant MW stations when conditions are good, like from North Africa, and even North America. I know many MW DXers in Europe like to DX North Amrican signals. It helps that your MW band is relatively clear because there are no MW stations in Germany. The D-220 is certainly a nice radio to get for emergencies, or just as a basic everyday radio. It is so compact and easy to carry around that you can really take it anywhere. And it performs very, very well!
Hola, gracias por la revisión.Sospecho que Xhdata sólo ha utilizado la misma electrónica que tienen otras radios económicas como la Baijiali KK67,KK78,..y sólo ha cambiado la carcasa.Son radios que funcionan muy bien en Fm, bastante discretas en Am y bastante bien en Sw.Saludos desde España.
¡Hola y gracias por tu comentario! Creo que XHDATA usó un chip DSP mejor que las radios que mencionas aquí. Estas son radios realmente bonitas y pueden funcionar bien. No tengo ninguna de esas radios Bajiali, así que realmente no puedo comparar. Por los videos que he visto de las radios Bajiali, me parece que el D-220 tiene un nivel de ruido mucho más bajo y parece ser un poco más sensible también. El D-220 me parece de calidad.
The D-220 covers both 9 and 10 kHz on MW, by using 1 kHz steps . This also means that you have to tune s-l-o-w-l-y in order to find the strongest point. Tuning SW is more of a pain, because of the single cramped dial, but it does receive all strong SW stations. It is NOT a DXer, but it does have very good reception for the price. It really is a good little pocket radio. Sins you are in a totally different part of the world, it will be interesting to see Your results. 📻🙂
Hi Jeff, thanks for your comment, and the explanation about the 1 kHz steps on MW. I have already found that this radio is really good on shortwave. You need to tune very, very slowly, as you say. But it picks up very many signals. And quite clearly. It is a fun radio. I will make a video soon showing how I tune it on shortwave, so that you can see how many stations I hear.
Thanks for your nice comment about my accent! I'm not in the USA though, I'm in South Africa 😀 It's true, these batteries are quite easy to recharge with the right kit. I generally keep a whole bunch of extra AA batteries anyway, you never know when you might need them. They are quite cheap and remain charged for a very long time.
Thanks Andre, nice to see you in your Prime…(Amazon Prime), that is…😂! The radio looks promising and good looking, but @ $10 I will have to take out a loan …😮! Looks like Xhdata has another winner on its hand, my question to you is the SW and MW bands better on this or the D219? The sound sounds almost as good as my D-608WWB. 73! Have a great day!
I have an old '70s Reader's Digest-branded RDA-127 (Worldstar) I keep in the EMP can with all my other SHTF radios. Took it out last night to a high, open place and was surprised how well it picked up the U.K. on 550-ish kHz and 9600-ish SW. Also NZ on SW, with a simple speaker wire dipole, from California. It's big, but has many features for the $25 I paid a decade ago. I run rechargeable D-cells because plugging it in is too noisy. I just cut the plug off of some old mono adapter and soldered extensions. This may wake up your old radios too.
Hi Ben, thank you so much for your comment and for sharing the story of this radio. It is amazing how long-lasting some radios from decades ago are. I use a few quite old radios myself, including the Barlow Wadley XCR-30 from the late 1970s and a Sony ICF-J40 from the late 1980s. Both still work really well. I don't think many of today's DSP-based radios will last for four or five decades :-)
Hi Patricio, it does have AM (or, as I call it in the video, Medium Wave). In Europe and other countries AM often refers to both MW and SW, so to distinguish between the two I use the terms MW and SW. This radio definitely does cover AM, as it is known in North America.
I think this one is very power-efficient, I have a feeling the batteries will last for months. I really like the fact that it uses regular AA batteries.
Of course the small radio has a 10 khz step on medium wave. Anyone here think it would be 1 khz steps? This would be the equivalent of 1200 frequency steps of one khz each on a tiny radio... Impossible. Even the big brother D219 with its spread bands only uses 9 khz steps on medium wave.
So what is the rational for having 2 FM bands, when one of them completely overlaps the other? One goes low enough to pick up Japanese FM stations but only if you are in Japan - makes no sense to have that capability being sold in the US! You can't DX on FM.
@@swlistening You are right. AM radio is being discontinued in Brazil. Fm has been expanded so the old AM radios could move to fm, and now fm starts at 76 MHz in Brazil.
