Customer Reviews

Kaito Electronics Inc. WRX911BLK Analog AM/FM/SW World Receiver - Black

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

 

 

I own a Grundig Satellit 700 and a Sangean ATS-803A, reputed to be serious contenders in the sensativity/reception category. This little gem is great. It picks up everything my Grundig can on it's internal whip antenna. Granted some of the weak signals are inaudible on the WRX911, but honestly are impossible to hear on the Grundig as well. I love this radio so much I purchased a second one just to squirrel away as a backup. Do yourself a favor and pick one up to take with you everywhere. I tuck it in my pocket to pull out at any time I want a world news fix. It picks up AM/FM equally as well. Worth every dime, I think you'll agree.

Ron
KI4AIB

My WRX911 has seen over 9 months of regular use/abuse, and still remains a usual suspect in my roster of "grab and go" radios. The radio is only a dash larger than a pack of cigarettes and comes in either black or metallic blue. I've found the blue color to be quite the conversation generator when tuning the dial in public. It comes with a carry strap, pouch, earphones and AC wall adaptor. The radio sits horizontally, with a tilting stand mounted to the back for just the right angle to keep it stable while tuning the dial. Reception on FM, AM, and the 9 shortwave bands is very good for a radio this size. Overall quality is good, with solid construction, a decent feel on the switches, and the tuning dial moving smoothly through the frequencies. For its price, there are a few expected shortcomings. The tuning dial is analog instead of digital, and can make finding a particular station a sometimes hit-and-miss exercise. There is no dial lighting, and the power and tune LED's seem overly-bright in a darkened room. Dial accuracy can be somewhat subjective and varies from unit to unit, with some being off on certain bands and dead-on with others. The audio quality isn't as rich as some people demand from their radios, but even with a small speaker it is easy to hear what is coming through. The battery door hides 2 AA batteries, and removes completely. This can make it easy to lose if you're not careful. The FM on my radio is so sensitive, it easily overloads into a mishmash of stations unless the antenna is pulled back to the body. The antenna will not tilt forward when the radio is in an angled position, and will cause the radio to fall over when tilted back while the WRX911 is standing straight. The overall sensitivity of this radio is great for something so small, with plenty of AM stations coming in and most shortwave offerings not being a problem. A few feet of wire and alligator clip snapped onto the antenna allow the WRX911 to really haul in the fainter SW stations. There's no clock, memories, gain switches or the like, and that's alright. The WRX911 is designed to be a small, no-frills radio that brings in local and distant signals while on the go, and it has accomplished this very well. For the price, you may want to pick up two before anyone else discovers these little gems.

This is an "old fashioned" dial and pointer radio, lacking all of the features of a modern digital set... no preset stations, poor indication of the actual frequency that is tuned, no clock, no alarm. Somehow, it is still great fun to use!
Band scanning has been a weak point of digital radios... the sound is usually muted while slewing through the frequency range, leaving just a tuning indicator light to show that a station has been found (most will not stop scanning on weak signals), or if not muted, a loud "chuffing" noise is produced as the frequencies are scanned. With this set you just turn the knob and listen for stations!
If you want to easily find, say the BBC on 5.975 Mhz a digital radio will get you there much faster, but for scanning the band to see what is on, the old dial and pointer still works quite well!
Also see my review of the Similar Sangean model SG622. The Sangean is slightly more expensive, larger in size, slightly better sounding due to having a larger speaker, Kaito seems to be slightly more sensitive on weak signals and is more solid feeling. I like the thumbwheel controls and color (blue) of the Kaito better. Wish I could give the Kaito another 1/2 star! ...both work well!

Pro:
Cheap and cheerful, small and light-weight, the right size for a travel bag, well built, good AM, reasonable FM and SW performance, low power consumption. Easy and intuitive to operate. No 100 page manual, no switch to set the radio to a "9kHz frequency spacing".

Con:
High pitched and annoying speaker, amplifies the hiss, unfortunately FM only in 'mono'. No Long Wave "LW" (a must in Europe if you speak French, or live in the UK).
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Other:
This travel-radio is for those moments when you cannot figure out whether the local FM or AM radio station announces the imminent end of the world or the results of the local high school soccer match: Loud and clear, in Polish, Farsi, Hausa, or Bengali. That is why I prefer an ANALOG (over a digitally tuned) radio: A quick manual scan, on the full hour over the WXR911's 9 SW-bands and you probably have a station in YOUR language. Ideal when in Europe, Mid- and Far-East, Asia and Africa. All of which receive POWERFUL SW stations.

This radio is wonderful. The reception is great. I was able to get stations from Taiwan, China, Japan, Sweeden, Britain, Germany, many Spanish speaking countries and lots of morse code, too. If you want to hear worldwide broadcasts, this is for you.

At last count, I own over 50 shortwave radios - everything from $10 "throwaways" to 20 tube military grade behemoths from the 1950's to modern professional grade communications receivers. I recently purchased the Kaito WRX911 and am surprised at the performance of this little gem.

The build construction is very good. Unlike most portables at this price, it doesn't feel like its going to break in your hand when you're tuning stations. The controls operate solidly and smoothly. It runs forever on 2 AA batteries, even the lower voltage rechargeables. The speaker's small size limits bass response, but the sound that is there is clean and distortion free, and there is ample volume - it is a very listenable unit.

The WRX911 is remarkably "hot", i.e., it is very sensitive (the ability to capture weak signals) on the AM and shortwave bands. Its reception is very good with its internal antennas - attach 6 or 8 feet of external wire to the whip for shortwave and it really cooks. The WRX911 also has very good selectivity (the ability to separate stations close to one another).

I compared the performance of the WRX911 to two of my other pocket portable favorites: the Crane CC Radio SWP, (a digital readout unit still in production and selling for twice the price), and my venerable Japanese made Sony ICF4920 pocket portable from the 1980's (a dual conversion unit selling for $99 back then). The WRX911 blew away the Crane unit for sensitivity and selectivity on both AM and shortwave. The WRX911 was as equally sensitive as the dual conversion Sony unit, but a tad less selective. Nevertheless, using the WRX911 on shortwave during peak evening hours, I am still able to separate stations operating 10 kHz apart from each other- that's impressive selectivity for any pocket radio, let alone a unit at this low price. And once a station is tuned, there is no drifting - it "stays tuned". FM band performance is also very good in my remote rural location.

The radio's only negative is its slight dial inaccuracy. The WRX911 covers all of the frequencies in each of the popular shortwave broadcast bands, but the indicated dial frequency is slightly off on all of them - sometimes a bit too low on one band and sometimes a bit too high on another. This is a common problem on most analog portables, but at least the inaccuracy is not "way off" on the WRX911.

After my first unit, I immediately purchased 4 more. All 5 units are defect free and exhibit the same strong performance characteristics described above. This leads me to conclude that the Chinese manufacturer's quality control is reasonably good. In summary, this is much more radio than I ever expected for the price. The WRX911 is a winner.

The Kaito WRX911 is a great and inexpensive, no frills, very small, pocket radio receiver for detection of am/fm/sw signals. It has very good sensitivity and consequently great signal reception on all bands, but is a real powerhouse sw receiver to boot! Even without the antenna extended I can readily and clearly receive the Fort Collins time station on numerous frequencies (with fair weather).

It has LED's for both an indication of power-on (red) and also a separate one for tuning (green). It has a good sized telescopic antenna for fm and sw as well as an internal ferrite antenna for am waves. It also has a nice flip-out rear support stand for sitting it on a table while listening and it also comes with a wrist strap and a carrying pouch. It operates for a very long time on 2 AA batteries as well, but there is also an option for an ac adaptor with a jack that is located (on the left hand side) just above the earphone plug (and just below the volume control knob). One very nice feature is that the am/fm/sw band selection switch (located on the front) has been completely separated from the unit's on-off switch (located on the right hand side below the tuning knob) reducing the wear and tear on a single switch during its operation. There is no back light or lock switch, but at this price that may be asking too much.

Tuning is slow the "old" analog way, but it works very well and is great with patience for band scanning. It is both small and light and a great deal of fun especially as a starter radio or as a back-up to your digital favorite as well. I heartily recommend it!

I got this as an analog manual-scanning companion to the Sony ICF-7600GR I already had. I was quite surprised that the Kaito could pick up pretty much anything recognizable that the 6X-as-expensive Sony could. With either the whip antennas or a clip-on reel, they were both neck and neck--if you could hear it on the Sony, you could get it on the Kaito too (assuming you could TUNE the Kaito to the same station).

One gripe: the Kaito tuning knob is rather small, and would benefit if they made it larger (to allow finer tuning).

There was considerable tuning-dial error in the radio I got; the actual signal was about 100kHz higher than what the SW dial numbers indicated. If you wanted to tune in to specific stations by their broadcast frequencies, it would be helpful if you would first compare your Kaito radio to any digital-tuner radio to get an idea of what kind of dial error to expect. Once you know that error, it's pretty easy to get the Kaito tuned to *about* where you want.

The Kaito tunes in AM and FM as well, but I didn't really purchase it for that. The AM and FM bands certainly work, but they are not particularly notable in any regard.

This radio looks and sounds small and cheap, it will not impress anyone but it does what it's supposed to.

-end-

Twenty-five years ago, Sony made 'em this way, and even then, the Sonys were more expensive.

This baby puts the world back in your hands.

Exceptional value.

Radio came in good condition from JR's. Open it up, turned it on. Isn't it wonderful that you can actually just turn on a radio without having to do any pre-sets or set the clock. Radio has a cheap feel to it but for $19 bucks, I didn't expect it to be like the Grundig G6 either. Now the meat and potatoes of the radio. AM reception is good with fairly good selectivity as long as a monster signal isn't near it. FM reception I find to be poor, it picks up the strong stations, but the weak stations lag. Shortwave has pretty good sensitivity and selectivity, it's really with this. But on shortwave, the frequency dial is way, way off..... Radio Habana on 6000khz is showing up on this radio at 5.90 with the dial right over the 5. It also suffers from bad images approx 900khz down... I picked up the image of Radio Habana on 5100khz and the 60m band was loaded with 49m band images. But if you ignore the dial, this station does well picking up medium to strong shortwave radio stations. It's not a DX champ, but for 20 bucks, this radio wasn't meant to be one either.

Yes, it lacks behind the Grundig G5 and G6 in every measureable way. But this is a 20 buck radio vs a 100 dollar radio.

Bottom line: A good really cheap radio for the price. A good carry around radio that you don't worry about losing.

Recommended if 20 bucks is all you have to spend. Otherwise, Go with the Grundig G6 or new G3.