Hello Everyone.
The following are my observations and notes on the digital radio I
recently purchased. It is not an exhaustive review and should only be
used as a rough guide. Some of you may have seen the link posted by
Jackie a few days ago to a DAB radio which I bought from Amazon. I have
to say I am rarely as impressed as this by gadgets. I was always a fan
of radios with built in speakers that you could slip in to your pocket,
but I never thought I'd find a DAB radio below £40 with replaceable
battery that I could carry around. The radio measures just 9CM long, by
5CM wide by 3 CM deep. It has 4 buttons on the front, left to right they
are P which stands for preset, volume down, volume up and the one on the
very right is power and mode. on the top edge, you have the aerial (top
left) and a headphone socket. on the right hand side, there is a rocker
wheel at the top which can also be pressed in to make a selection, a
sliding hold switch and a Micro USB port for charging. when slid
downwards, the radio is unlocked.
Its powered by a BL5C Nokia phone battery, so buying replacements is not
a problem. Goodmans state battery life is up to 13 hours on headphone
mode, less on speaker mode. If yours does not come with battery
inserted, gently prize the back cover off from the bottom edge and
insert your battery. Make sure you charge the radio for a minimum of 2
hours using the included USB cable before use. Any USB charger should do
the job, though if your charger outputs anything less than 2 Amps
charging may take longer than 2 hours. Its worth noting that goodmans do
not provide a mains charger, but at this price its not surprising at all
and its 1 less charger to worry about. You could probably also use the
radio while its charging.
Press and hold power in for 3 to 5 seconds to power the radio on. When
you first turn the radio on, make sure you have the aerial fully
extended. be careful with the aerial, at this price it could break
easily though only time will tell. it seems to be made of a pretty
flexible durable material. the bottom part is also hinged to allow you
to angle the aerial. The radio should auto scan for DAB stations. if it
doesn't, press and hold the wheel in for 2 to 5 seconds and this should
launch the auto scan. after a minute or so, it should start playing DAB
stations.
the wheel is used to cycle up and down between stations. you turn the
wheel up and down. its spring loaded so will always spring back to the
middle. press the wheel in to switch to a station. once you've memorized
the order of stations as with any DAB device, you should have no problem
switching to different stations. you can also press the power button
once to switch to FM mode and again to switch back to DAB. to power off,
press and hold power for 3 seconds or more until the unit turns off.
to store your stations as presets, you need to navigate to the station
you want to store. press and hold the preset button for 2 seconds. the
screen should flash. arrow to the preset you'd like to store the station
in using the wheel and press the wheel in to store. to switch to a
preset, press the preset button once to display the list of presets,
arrow up or down to your preset and press the wheel in to select and
switch. by default, the preset that you're listening too will be
highlighted. it will not return you to the top of the list of presets
when switching between them. but again once you memorize the order,
you're fine. I have managed to obtain an accessible version of the
manual, i'm including a link below.
The radio is quite loud, I am frankly amazed because of the size how
much power output the speaker has. i'd say that even someone who was
hard of hearing could listen to the device. I would've liked a belt clip
to be included, but goodmans have provided a loop at the back of the
radio on the top edge to attach a lanyard. at this price you can't
expect too much. I am thinking of buying another one. You may also be
able to use the radio without extending the aerial if you live in a
really good DAB reception area, though its recommended when you do your
initial scan to have the aerial extended fully. If anyone would like
assistance setting your radio up at a small cost and no sighted help is
available, please don't hesitate to drop me a note off list and I am
sure we can arrange a convenient time to hook up on skype via video chat.
The radio is available from the following link via Amazon:
*http://tinyurl.com/gtxktm9
The manual is not especially formatted or adapted, but most people
should be able to make sense of it. If you can't make sense of it, i'd
be happy to provide hints off list. The manual can be found at:
https://vits.org.uk/Downloads/goodmans-gdprdab.html
thanks for reading,
Mo.
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