Discussion in 'Product reviews' started by Caribou, Mar 31, 2019.
I recently picked up a Kaito KA500 emergency receiver from Amazon. It has four ways to power the radio solar, hand crank, replaceable batteries, and wall wart. It suggests that you turn off the radio while using the hand crank and to crank for two minutes, that gave me eight minutes of listening on the rechargeable.
It does NOT come with a wall wart but I had a 5V wall wart and it has ports on the back for 5V and 6V chargers. You should be able to pick up something suitable at the spaghetti farm section of your local Salvation Army or similar store for next to nothing, or go through your own spaghetti farm for free.
It does come with ear buds that I was able to store in the battery compartment as I don't plan to use regular batteries. It also came with a cable for USB to the 5V in port. Other ports include 6V in and a port for the ear buds. There is a 5V out USB port to charge phones or other electronics though I'm unsure how valuable that is without being plugged into 120V. It could be worth it to hand crank your phone in an emergency but I'd really want to talk before I started cranking. There is a switch to power on the USB port.
The solar panel can be flipped up so as to receive solar power from either the front or the back of the radio. There is a light switch with 4 positions off, 5 LED panel behind the solar panel, flashing red LED on the side, or single white LED on the side. This might be okay if I was willing to use up 3 AA batteries (not provided).
Radio reception is on AM, FM, SW from 3.2 to 22 MHz, 7 weather bands, and NOAA Alert. The AM, FM, and weather band worked great. I only have one weather station that I can receive here but that is all I need. I was unable to get any SW reception but it was not fully dark when I tried though the sun was down. Leaving the NOAA alert on killed the rechargeable battery while I slept. If you leave the Weather Band set to your local station, the Band set to Weather, the Power set to NOAA Alert, and the wall wart plugged in then the radio will automatically turn on for any NOAA alerts in your area.
I'm sure many of you are interested in the number of stars. Yes, if you hit yourself hard enough in the head with this radio you will see stars though I can't imagine that the number of stars really matters. Okay, okay! I wouldn't buy another one but I'm not going to send this one back. This is my third hand crank radio and it is probably the best because the others didn't have the NOAA capability. It's a nice enough looking radio and will suit my purposes. I'm generally not impressed with this class of radio though they do fit a niche and I'm glad to have this one. I'm a bit irked that it didn't come with a wall wart, mostly because it comes with a sales pitch to buy one from them. Five minutes in my spaghetti farm fixed that problem.
Patchouli, The Lazy L, Terri9630 and 2 others like this.