Customer Reviews

Cobra 19DXIV 40 Channel Mobile Compact CB Radio

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

OVERVIEW

I had this radio in my Dodge truck. It tucked nice under the dash and was a great performer. Power was good as well as reception. Great Buy!

POWER

Any CB you purchase is limited to 4 watts output power so dont let size fool you. ALL CB'S are limited to 4 watts due to FCC regulations, look it up!

PRICE

The price on this site is high retail to say the least. I purchased this unit from Wal-Mart for 35 dollars.

SIZE

This will not take up a bunch of in-cab space that you dont have to spare due to manual tranmissions and transfer case levers. It tucks away nice and doesnt get in the way.

The 19 DX IV is a great little CB for the money. Yes, like a previous reviewer said, it does reset to channel 1 each time the power is cut, but....there's an instant channel 9/19 button. So with two little taps, your on 19, no big deal. This is a great unit for someone who just wants a basic unit to monitor highway conditions while travelling. It's also good for someone who wants to have a CB for emergencies but wants a step up from one of those useless emergency CBs like you used to see marketed a while back. Finally, yes, it's great for off-roaders who want a basic CB that can fit in the tight interior of a jeep or smaller truck. As with any CB, the antenna makes the big difference. Pair this with a Wilson Little Wil magnet mount antenna and you have a solid performing combo for routine CB use.

bought one of these because i had a good experience with the older model (III). this is a good little radio, doesnt have some of the bells and whistles of more expensive models but works fine as a CB. if it had a channel scanning or built in SWR functions i would have given it 5 stars.

I bought the Cobra 19 DX IV for my wife's car since we needed a small radio without bells and whistles.

This radio appeared to be a perfect fit for my needs. But, after using it, I am disappointed with this radio. Here's why:

1. Unit resets to channel 01 when it loses power. So either wire it directly to the battery (and remember to turn it off!) or wire it to accessory power and work channel 01 every time you start the car.

2. "Poppy" squelch. When a weak signal breaks the squelch then fades, the squelch makes an annoying popping sound as it squelches the audio.

3. S/RF meter shows nothing (drops to zero) when squelch activates. If the squelch is set fairly high, the meter shows no signal until someone manages to break the squelch. I personally think the meter should show all RF activity whether the squelch is on or off.

Hope this helps someone.

It's a decent unit, and cobra is a great company, but there is much better. The midland 1001z is much better built and has much better sound quality and features.

That being said, here's why this radio gets three stars. My main issue is the new digital setup on this radio. It pops as signals come in and out of the squelch range. This gets very annoying when you want to just cut out the white noise and hear as much as you can. If someone is right on the border of your signal range, they will pop as they cut in and out, where as other radios will feather in and out, or hold the signal until they quit transmitting. The previous generation of this radio (with the separate LED lights for the meter) was MUCH better in this regard. If you must have a cobra, look for that version, or go to another model. Cobra just went too cheap on this one, but you still pay a premium for the name. All the components feel needlessly light compared to the competition, and also compared to older cobra's themselves. The one missing feature that others have is the RF gain. Very handy and doesn't seem like it'd be much trouble for them to add it, but they reserve that for their expensive radios.

Again, on it's own, this is a good radio, but when you look at it side by side with it's cheaper priced competition, the choice is easy.

this is a perfect CB if your looking for a radio with PA capabilities that is compact. most radios this size dont offer the PA capability. one consideration is that this unit does not have a scan feature. i have the ext speaker (the one for listening to the other person talk) wired to the smaller factory speaker mounted in the door of my 08 Tacoma, volume is plenty loud. my friend has an 19dx iv also and he is using the unit's integrated speaker which isnt quite loud enough when driving down the road, forcing him to turn it up to a level where the output distorts slightly. an external speaker of some sort is definitely recommended with this (and almost all) CB units.

bottom line if you are looking for something cheap to throw in your 4x4 for off roading or whatever the purpose, it has the exact same "broadcast" power as units costing 3x as much; of course you give up features like weather band, blue tooth connectivity, back-lit knobs etc. but its small, cheap and works well at what its designed to do.

for the price, its a good little radio... if you want more extras you are going to have to shell out more bucksthe lcd screen works fine....

I bought this radio and brought it to Brazil where I tested it with a 13.8VDC power supply rated at 20A continuos. While overloading my power supply it was putting out no more than 1 W, regardless of SWR (I tested with an antenna tuner at 1.1:1 and bypassing the tuner at 2:1 with similar results).

Inittially, it would just lit the overload led at the power supply. In a few minutes it made the power supply protection circuit shut it down.

I disconnected the Cobra (CB) and connected a Yaesu and trasnmitted for 3 minutes at 75W FM (2 meters) and the power supply was just happy, no signals of overload, just the expected heat.

I wonder if this was just a defective unit that passed through quality control or if this is what you can expect from this product/price??

I would not bother trying to return it to Amazon since shipping from Brazil back to the US would not be worth it.. lost money and learned a lesson, the hard way.

I got this radio because I wanted a small cheap cb. I pared this with a cobra HG1500 antenna and cobra HG M75. The SWR are 1 from ch1 to ch40. After tunning the radio and mic it will cover 5 miles in the city so not bad, reports come back clean. The stock mic is "staticy". For a small $40 cb if u spend the time to do some work to it you wont be dissapointed but dont expect to get out 20 miles on it.

This product was new, but the microphone did not work. Another CB user loaned me a microphone to find out that mine was bad. I contacted Cobra who promptly sent out another new microphone at no cost to me. I was appreciative that they stand by their products.