Customer Reviews

Oregon Scientific WR196T All Hazard Radio with AM/FM Radio & S.A.M.E Technology

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I bought three of this particular model of NOAA radios in November 2000. Within a week period in July 2001, all three LCDs went blank, the memory failed, and the radio went haywire. When I contacted the company about this, I received no reply. If there was trouble with a specific batch, it should have been replaced. If this is their normal quality, I would stay away.

I purchased my WR196T just last year. Despite rather confusing instructions printed on one sheet of extremely thin paper, I finally was able to get the radio working. That lasted less than a year when, suddenly, the unit failed to activate/respond to NWS alert signals, both real and tests. Trying to recode the radio, I discovered it would no longer accept any SAME codes.

Oregon Scientific, manufacturer of the radio, says it does not offer any repair services and will replace a unit only within a 90-day warranty period. Since the radio is a rather expensive bit of electronics, you might be better served by buying a unit from a more responsive company.

Bought this radio after a tornado watch made me realize we had no overnight way to be notified of dangerous weather. So far it works great, but I have only had it going for a week. You just put it on NOAA standby mode and it activates automatically when it receives a severe weather alert. A long LCD bar blinks green every 2 or 3 seconds when there are no alerts, then it blinks red the entire time a weather alert is active. With the SAME technology you can program specific county codes and only receive alerts from those areas ...

Pros: Small size lets it fit on my bedside table. Sleek look. Displays date/time/inside temp./weather warning messages. Was able to program only nearby county codes so we only receive warnings in our area. So far we have had two different days of bad weather and the radio worked as advertised. I can't comment on the strength of long range NWS radio reception since the NWS radio station is in my city. But it picks the signal up great. It can also be used as a clock radio alarm. The FM reception is good and you can preset stations.

Cons: The backlight is good but can only be on for 10 seconds at a time when you hit a button. Since I'm using it as a clock radio it would have been nice to have an option for at least a dim backlight on all through the night to see the time. The instructions were slightly less than user friendly. It was not clearly spelled out how to set the radio to NOT receive ALL the nearby county alerts, but I figured it out: you hit the county button, and when it displays county zero you hit the alarm on/off button to blank it out. If you want to wake up to radio on the alarm you can't use the snooze feature - as far as I can tell the radio comes on in sleep mode (60 minutes) and ignores the snooze button. I have to use the alarm to use snooze.

Overall I would recommend this weather radio, but cannot provide long term feedback on it yet.

I ordered this unit because I wanted one radio that would both receive AM and FM, and also provide weather alerts. Surprisingly, the WR196T is one of the few on the market that combines these features. I ended up returning it to Amazon after 24 hours, for the following reasons: ... Second, the instructions were poor. Despite all of the functions to master, Oregon Scientific took the cheap approach of trying to condense all of the instructions onto a single large sheet of paper, which is folded into sections. The instructions aren't very clear either. Third, the controls are far from user-friendly. You'd think that the "Radio On" control would turn it on. Nope. A fact I only figured out after initially deciding I had a lemon. (I may be a bit off on this--the unit is already in the return mail so I don't have it in front of me to double-check the control). Fourth, the sound quality is mediocre. Not a big factor for the weather radio transmissions, but a problem while listening to AM/FM. Apparently the slim design, while high-tech, kept them from using a more adequate speaker. Fifth, the sensitivity of the radio, even for standard AM and FM, was mediocre. Local stations were weak unless I carefully positioned the unit. Sixth, the unit includes a clock radio/alarm function, probably because the design engineer saw that the chip set could handle it at little extra cost. For my purposes, this functionality only further complicated an already hard to use unit. I have a clock radio next to my bed; I don't need it in a unit like this. Seventh and last, I specifically wanted to listen to a station in the not-overly-new extended AM band, which runs from 1605-1710 KHz. Every recent car radio covers those frequencies. The WR196T stops at 1600 KHz. Would it have cost them that much to extend the unit to cover the full AM band? The only positive I can offer is that the unit includes a digital thermometer, which can be somewhat useful. I hope that Oregon Scientific sends their engineers back to the design consoles to build a better unit--they'd find that it would sell!

It quit working completely after a couple months. Of course this was after the warranty ran up. It was used very little if at all during those months. Must have been defective, but what can I do now except buy another one, which i won't.

I bought one for my brother a year ago. Works great. Only alerts you to weather in your area because you tell it what area you live in by area number. I plan to buy one for my sister this year. (...) WR196T replaced (the earlier recalled version) WR122.

Sorry everyone, I really wanted to rate this high, ... It came with no antenna, standard. Without an antenna, it picks up few neighboring countie warnings, and lousy radio reception. The radio stinks, sounds cheap, like a ... 4 transistor I had 40 yrs ago. Hard to program (I work with computers), hard to operate. The alarm works half the time, probably due to no antenna. Save your money.

Have had the radio over a year and it has worked well for every incident. I recently moved it to a second home and was able to re-program the counties for S.A.M.E. even without instructions that I lost. That must mean it is not too difficult to run.

I highly recommend this type of model over others without S.A.M.E. technology as they tend to send alerts way too often.

This radio works fine. Oregon Scientific recalled these radios shortly after I bought mine because of some sort of product defect. This updated replacement radio has worked just well side by side with my portable weather radio. The sound is good. I like the visual message display.

This product has the most difficult programming instructions I have ever seen. Even changing the clock time (which you have to do 2X per year) proves to be a major challenge requiring the manual. The manual also must have been translated from Chinese as it is also difficult to understand...even for someone like myself with a technical degree! I tossed the product out after 6 months.