JENSEN SR-50 Portable AM FM Digital Radio with Telescoping Antenna Black SR-50

UPDATE: I have read several reviews of this radio in which battery life is a recurrent complaint. My experience has been very different: I installed 4 AA batteries sold by my local farm store (not a nationally-known name brand) on April 13 and that night, listened to the first of several St. Louis Cardinals baseball games I have listened to in the month and a half since. These games, and their pre-and-post-game coverage, last 3 to 5 hours. The original set of batteries finally gave up on May 30, or 1 month and 17 days after installation. I was mightily impressed by that, especially since I had only just bought and began using these cheap batteries which were on sale. -------------------------- My poor little Midland emergency radio started to crap out, so I decided to try something different this time around. I have plenty of NOAA weather radios, so this time I just wanted AM-FM capability and digital operation. This one looked like it would fit the bill nicely. And so far, I've not been disappointed. Reception even at fair distances is excellent, both in AM and FM modes. My usual station of choice is a 3,600-watt country FM station whose tower is about 25 miles from my home. The Midland had a hard time locking in on it, but this little Jensen gives me crystal-clear sound with almost no static. I have yet to need or want to use the Aux input, so I can't comment on it at this point. However, I anticipate the sound quality will equal the broadcast bands. I must say, here, that the tone output is good for both music and voice (i.e., sports, which is most of what I listen to). I noticed in a couple of reviews that other users were complaining that the radio turns itself off after a couple of hours. This is actually easily avoidable if you just don't press the "Sleep" button. The first press of the button turns the radio off after - you guessed it - 120 minutes, or two hours. Further presses give you 90, 60, 30, 15, 10 or 5 minutes, and the radio then dutifully does what you asked of it. It turns off. You can, if you choose, press past 5 minutes and turn the sleep timer off. The other buttons and the two knobs operate easily and, if you take a few minutes on unboxing and read the very concise manual that's included, they're easy to make their way through quickly. I like the rubberized covering. It feels nice and it makes the radio pleasant to the touch. It does seem to gather dust pretty easily. But a quick wipe takes care of that. The radio also has a clock, which seems to keep time pretty well so far, and dual alarms, which I've not yet used, but might when I camp this summer. My only real beef is that Jensen made provision to use an AC adapter, but didn't include one. I guess for the price, you can't have everything. I'll probably get one at some point, but first we'll see how long that batteries last. If you've got the need for a small, inexpensive, easily portable AM-FM radio, grab one while you can. I think you'll like it! Read more

After awhile the radio erupted with continuous static. I did no good to change the station--anything. i got to looking on the internet info and discovered a little known secret--you must not play it very loud. Once you do, the radio is kaput! Read more

I like it, it has a sleep timer and uses 4 AA batteries and has pretty decent sound quality, because it's PLL digital tuning and it's relatively sensitive, I'm going to guess that this particular model hasn't been infected with the DSP chip craze, at least all the indicators seem to indicate that the tuning isn't off frequency like a typical analog DSP radio often suffers from an inability to fine tune the frequency adjustment before it leaves the assembly area at a given factory production facility. Update: I had some trouble with long term battery life, but that's a given even thought when I had batteries in it, it seemed to last for a few months before the batteries drained out while turned off, but it should be noted, I only used it occasionally before retiring to hear a few news stories, so unless you go to the trouble of buying an adapter for this radio, it will eat up 4 AA's even when it's turned off. I currently have it un-batteried as I didn't want to risk leakage when not in use, but after reading a few of the other reviews, one of them sounds exactly like one of the fatal flaws of a DSP radio where turning up the volume all the way starves the VCO effectively killing the radio "DSP chip" ability to do what typical analog, (non-DSP) radios hardly ever have trouble operating if the volume is turned all the way up. Read more

Good sound for local stations Read more

What I disliked is, you assume a radio automatically comes with a headphone jack. This one did not. However, it did come with an imput to enable amplification of your cell phone (which is kind of unusual as well). I used it primarily for listening to talk radio mostly, in the car for when the radio has to be kept off (due to the battery drain, on the car). One nice thing is, the batteries last for quite awhile as does the radio itself. I've bought 2 of them, so far. One for a friend of mine. It's very handy and portable too. Read more

Nice small radio, perfect for us vintage adults. Read more

I bought it to listen to music, but I was disappointed in the sound quality, very little highs. Sounds like you have a pillow over it. Read more

Love it but it's such a battery hog. Four AAs every four weeks or so and I only use it 1/2 hour or so per day. It's pointless to set the presets since they are lost when the batteries go bad so frequently. Read more