The Raddy RF206 offers exceptional value for the money with good performance overall. It is currently available at Raddy’s website for $20.99 but during the time I was preparing this review the Amazon price varied from $22.99 to $16.99 and Raddy’s price fell to $14.99 which is rather amazing considering all that it has to offer. It covers AM from 520 to 1710 KHz with 10K/9K tuning steps, FM from 64 – 108 MHz and SW from 2.3  to 23 MHz. It runs in 4 AA cells or built-in AC power (no external adapter needed), and although my radio is marked 100 – 110 Volts Raddy has assured me it is compatible with the normal 120 volts found in the US today. It can play audio from Tiff cards or USB sticks. It supports TF cards with a maximum capacity of 256GB and can play WMA, WAV, APE, FLAC and MP3 formats. In Bluetooth/TF/USB music playback modes, you can pause playback, fast forward or rewind, and select the previous or next song. Audio is strong and clear plus there is a 3.5MM headphone jack, an external antenna jack for SW and a fold-down carrying handle.

You can tune manually with the tuning knob or use Auto Scan, and there is also ATS which will automatically save presets. – 20 for AM, 30 for FM and 60 for SW. You can also manually add or delete presets as needed. There are several other features such as a 12 hour clock with alarm and sleep timer, adjustable backlight brightness and lock mode.

Dimensions:  3.94″L x 1.97″W x 5.91″H

Weight:  1.8 Pounds

Checking it out:

Overall, I found little to complain about the Raddy RF206. Of course, at its price you don’t expect every feature – for example there is no FM stereo and no fine tuning but basic reception and sound are mostly good at this incredibly low price. There is some digital noise on AM which reminded me of some early DSP radios…such digital noise was usually caused by lack of adequate internal shielding and maybe in future production the AM noise could be quieted down which would be a good thing because the AM is rendered less sensitive in practical terms because weaker stations have background noise which is just not there on other radios. Basically, AM is the weakest band on this radio while FM and shortwave reception were very good especially at this price point. Since there is no keypad, you will definitely want to use the ATS auto memory setting especially on shortwave because in manual tuning mode it takes a very long time to scan from one end of the SW band to the other…by having presets which are strategically placed throughout the whole shortwave spectrum you can quickly get to where you need to go. The owner’s manual was not very clear on this but after using ATS to scan and store memories all you need to do is use a short press of the up down arrows to scan among the saved frequencies and by doing so you can hop from one end  of a band to the other very quickly

Hard-core DXers will dismiss the RF206 because it has no fine tuning or multiple bandwidths but one shouldn’t expect a DXing radio at this price. For its intended use as an all-around handy portable I was generally happy with its performance and it is a very easy radio to get to know. It’s not a radio I would go to for AM except for stronger signals but that is my only complaint here. It is also very convenient for using as a TIFF or USB card player, and the fact that it has built in AC power is also a big convenience.

Hold On To Those Memories! One quirk I discovered is that when using the AC cord, if I unplugged the plug from the wall while the cord was still plugged into the back of the radio (thus depriving the radio of any power) it lost all of its memories so best to have the AC plug in the wall before you plug or unplug it from the back of the radio. If you’re using batteries and need to change them it will maintain the memories for some time period…to be safe I suggest plugging in the AC power (again plug into the wall first and then the radio) and then all of your memories will be saved.

Conditionally Recommended!

Jay Allen

See it at Amazon:  

See it at Raddy