Customer Reviews

Kaito KA800 Pocket-size AM/FM NOAA Weather DSP Radio with Built-in 2GB MP3 Player

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I purchased this radio for multi-night hiking and I wasn't disappointed. The weather radio is extremely helpful, the MP3 player is great with plenty of memory for my favorite hiking music. The AM/FM radio performs very well and the auto tuning is ideal. I always take an extra battery, but after several 4 & 5 night hikes I have yet to need the second battery. The speaker works great and has plenty of volume. Because it's lightweight, has long battery life, multi-functions and great sound quality I highly recommend this item.

6/29/11 followup:... I have taken this radio with me on the Appalachian Trail. I am hiking the entire length, 2100 miles, this year. I started in Georgia in March and have used this radio the entire way so far (1120 miles). With the 2GB of memory I have plenty of room for music, the weather radio is a must and the AM & FM are great. Battery life is fantastic. Unit is light and sounds great for it's size. Having a lock switch is terrific. My only complaint is, the unit is slow changing from one music folder to the next, but this is a real minor complaint. I still highly recommend this radio, especially for hikers.

Oh by the way you can also make voice recordings, I use it to take notes of special events that happen during the day so I can recall them as I write my journal.

This product is small and easy to carry and has good sound quality on voice, it is a little complicated to use and the instructions and not much help. You basically have to figure out how to use the radio yourself. To clear the old recordings out of the radio is a problem as so many times the radio's little computer will just hang up and the radio stops working all together. You have to take the back off and take the battery out and re-insert it to re-boot the computer..the AM FM sensitivity is ok.. One thing to is that if you turn the volume totally down during recording the radio will not record at all, you have to keep the volume level at atleast a 1 or a 2 for it to record. The instructions never tell you that.. the placement of the volume controls and the forward / reverse controls are right next to each other and easily confused. I would not buy another radio like this, its a little to complicated to be fun to use.

This radio is incredible. It's very thin, able to fit into a shirt pocket. It's the only radio of this thin size that has a speaker built-in. For the size of the speaker, you will be surprised how clean the sound is. The manual could be written better, but the controls are simple once you know what each one does. It has a very large memory for your favorite stations. You can record directly off the air also. Hook it up to your computer and it will place a directory in your computer and you can easily download music files. The amount of memory is absolutely incredible. Between the Am/Fm radio, National Weather stations, MP3 music, the incredible thin size, the very clean sound, bright backlit display, displaying of battery charge, displaying of strength of station received, headphone jack, and much more, how can you do better. This radio can go whereever you go. I love it. You won't go wrong.

I purchased and set up the presets for my uncle. He works out in the cherry orchard and loves talk radio.
I was very excited to find AM/FM and MP3 capability.
Setting his favorite stations was pretty difficult. There is a combo of 3 or 4 buttons and a turn of a dial but once you set them you dont have to do it again.
Everything else is great!

I've had my Kaito about 5 months.

My wife always wants to borrow it. Her Radio- from "Radio ?$**/&" doesn't come close. I don't let her near it.

I decided to buy one for her very own. It's for our 51st Anniversary. It will be a great surprise.

My mailman saw mine, and his daughter is getting him one for Father's Day. Just the item, with the weather channels

to deliver mail in our famous "Buffalo Winters". So many bells & whistles - Haven't learned them all yet. recording.

Use it all the time while I walk in the mall in the morning. Don't like ear buds, so I either use the speaker, or headphones.

Buy it - you won't be sorry. I have even plugged it into my Apple for real sound.

Was looking for an all purpose radio that was small enough to carry in almost all conditions. I looked at several but finally decided to give this Kaito KA800 a try. I was non-pulsed by some of the reviews that indicated that it was a bit more complicated than some, I mean it's a portable radio how difficult can it be? I received the radio in a few days and was impressed with it right out of the box. The radio is NOT complicated. Its operation is straight forward from the battery install to its operation. The reception AND the sound is much better than I had expected. I did look at the manual to familiarize myself with the location of all the buttons but once that was done I charged the battery and the radio works like a charm. Because I will be using it mostly on my fishing boat I did invest in a waterproof/crush proof container to store the little radio in, need to make sure it is operational when I do use it.

Definitely satisfied with this purchase.

This radio is everything I hoped it would be. The sound quality is very good for a radio of this size. The ability to pick up radio stations is good. Downloading mp3 songs is easy as long as you create the files (then number them 1, 2, 3, etc.)and then drag the songs into them. The sound quality of the mp3 songs is good. I have shown this radio to others and they were impressed with its light weight and sound quality. Good product.

JWS

I think this is just a fantastic device. It does everything I expected...AM-FM-NOAA WX reception plus MP3 player and recorder of broadcasts and voice. However a word of warning, although the means of charging the radio through a USB connection is also a great feature the wall wart included with the radio uses what is called a switching transformer (SMPS). They are lightweight, small and efficient devices but unless well designed create a lot of RF (radio frequency) noise. Unfortunately this wall wart is dirty...meaning it creates tons of RF noise. If you try to use the radio while connected to the wall charger it will wipe out virtually all AM (MW) reception (or SW on the KA801), this is not the radio's fault but the wall wart power supply's doing!!! The radio still works sort of OK on FM and for WX-NOAA reception when charging with the wall wart. The Wall Wart charger is an acceptable charger, just don't expect good reception if you're connected to it and want to listen to the radio. The good news is you should still be able to charge the KA800 and have good radio reception at the same time by plugging the USB line into your laptop or desktop or similar power source which has a much cleaner power supply. Most folks will never have a problem with the charger issue since this device is really meant to be used while not tethered to it's charger.

I bought this primarily for AM/FM use. The reception was excellent. The controls are not very user friendly and retrieving my recorded music was very difficult. All in all, I would have kept it but the lock button would not un-lock so I returned it.

I use this product for recording Sirius radio programming and it works great. Holds hours, days, weeks of programming that I can take with me on travel