Retekess V115 Shortwave Radio, Digital Radio AM FM

I was looking for a new radio for the back porch and took a shot with this radio after reading some reviews. I gotta say, I am really impressed for the price. The sound quality is much better than I expected for a tiny speaker, and the battery lasts longer than I expected.The SD-card slot works great and you can actually go through the folders on it which is super convenient. The only issue I have while using the SD-card is when you open the folders to choose the music you want, it stops playing whatever you have on. It's certainly not a deal-breaker, but it would be nice if the music kept rollin' while browsing your music.FM/AM both work without issue, and with good reception. I have never had luck with getting stations through mini short-wave radios here in Nevada, so I can't speak to how well that works.I'm not a big fan of the old-school phone battery it uses, and I would love to see a version of this radio that is compatible with an 18650 battery. But as I said before, it does last a good while before I need to recharge. I ended throwing some Velcro on it so I that I can place one of my smaller power-banks on the back of the unit and charge on-the-fly.Overall, I definitely recommend this if you're looking for a small, reliable radio that has a decent battery life and sound that is better than most radios of this size.

I purchased this radio because I discovered it can record radio onto a MicroSD/TF card. After using it a bit, here is my review.Pros:For its small 1-inch speaker, it sounds pretty good. Not fantastic, but good. The speaker doesn't distort when turning it up high.Stereo sound on Headphones, and it sounds quite good with headphones.The radio recorder works very well. It records as an MP3 file, and there are 3 recording quality settings. It records at 128kbps on the low end and 320kbps on the high end and something in the 200s in the middle. You can also play those MP3s or other MP3s you have on the data card.One-touch recording to start recording quickly if you hear something on the radio and want to quickly record it.You can also use it as a voice memo recorder.The Display has big numbers and is quite legible. Comes with a good backlight.Has a 15" telescoping Antenna.AM and FM Reception is good for local or semi-local stations. Not really for DXing.Digital Tuning. Yeah! You can tune by either punching in the frequency directly or moving up and down the presets.Customizable presets for each band.9 kHz or 10 kHz stepping for AM, making it useful all around the world.It receives a wide band of shortwave bands, from 4.75 to 25 MHz.You can set a sleep timer when listening.Has a very common, user accessible, rechargeable battery, so you can charge more than 1 battery and swap it out when charging is not available.Recharges using a USB-C cable.It's light and is a small size. It will fit easily in a shirt pocket.Has an audio-in jack.Comes with a wrist strap with a little kickstand that you can plug into a notch on the back of the radio.It has no clock. I consider that a Pro.Cons:The User Interface for many of the features is poor. It takes some effort to figure things out. The manual is not super helpful.Shortwave reception is poor. It might be better if you purchased one of those long clip-on wire extension antennas, but as equipped, it is poor.The V115 is feature-rich and very useful for listening to & recording AM/FM radio.Bottom line, I think it's a good featured unit for only $20. The ability to record radio to MP3 is why I bought it.

Finally a good pocket size AM and FM radio with an MP3/WMA file music player built in. If you listen to music or talk radio, this solves the age old problem that there isn't always something on the radio you want to hear; with this, then you just instantly switch to your SD-card music with one touch of the "Mode" button, and then you can check back to the radio any time by pressing the FM/AM button, and when switching back again to the SD card, it goes right back to exactly where you left the song; they did that right!Another thing they did right is put in a good quality little speaker with a rear passive radiator, so this is by far the best sounding pocket-size radio I've ever had, and I have had several pretty good ones, Sony/Sangean/C-Crane. I can actually enjoy listening to music on this tiny mono speaker, and I'm an audiophile! It's almost unbelievable; I'm listening to it laying on my desk as I write this; of course only at very low volume, but that's sometimes a good thing, because many radios/speakers only sound good when you turn them up, and that often annoys other people.It's AM and FM radio reception is very good, on par with the best ones, again Sony/Sangean/C-Crane.It uses a standard battery used in cell-phones BL-5B or BL-5C, so you can buy more, including a separate charger, so you can even have a spare one charged and ready to swap in at any time. Note that the others mentioned use standard AA batteries, so they can do that too, but the lithium-ion has more power for it's size and weight. I hope it doesn't loose the presets, it takes so long to set, when the battery is swapped; some brands do, and some at least allow some time to swap the battery before loosing the presets, like one allows 15 seconds.It has lots of good information on the screen in both radio and SD-card modes. I don't see any "Stereo" indicator on the FM screen, but that's no big deal.Now for the less-than perfect aspects...As other reviews mention, the directions for setting the station presets, other than the auto-scan, are so confusing I'm not sure I can understand it well enough to even try, so all I have done so far is to use the auto-scan, which found over 30 stations, many of which are noisy or no sound at all, and then I used the Delete function to delete all the ones I didn't want, which was most of them, and now my two favorite FM stations are at preset number 6 and 28, instead of 1 and 2. Maybe I'll figure out how to set them to 1 and 2 later.Update: I learned how to set the presets, and it's not as complicated as it looks when reading the procedure, because in the written procedure there is lots of extra language describing how to first tune in a station, and then lots of extra language telling you what you will see when you press the buttons, but in reality it only takes 4 button presses to set a 1-digit preset, and 5 button presses to set a 2-digit preset, and once you memorize the very intuitive buttons to press, it's not bad at all. Once you are tuned to a station, press and hold Memo(5) for two seconds, then enter the desired preset number, then press Play two times; that's it.Another serious improvement is really needed; when using the SD-card player, this has the capability to navigate though the files and folders on your SD-card to select the track you want to play, but in order to navigate to find the next track you want to play, it stops playing the current song!? It's not obvious how to do the navigation, so I'll explain here: While in the SD-card mode, which when you select that mode will resume whatever song you were playing the last time you were in that mode, so far, so good. To get to the list of tracks, you have to press and hold the Play/Pause button to get to a menu, and the first item in the menu is "Root", supposedly meaning the root directory of the card, and then you have to press Play/Pause again to select that menu item, and that's when it stops playing the current song. Even though it stops playing the current song, it now shows a list of songs in the now-playing folder, and the current song that was playing is highlighted, so the only thing wrong is it should not have stopped playing it. Now you can move up and down the list of tracks in the currently selected folder, and if you want to play one of those, you can by pressing Play/Pause. If instead you want to go up to the folder menu, press and Hold the Play/Pause button. Great, it's not in the manual, but I discovered that works, then you can select any folder and then whatever song you want to play. If they do an upgrade that keeps playing the current song while doing file navigation to find the next song to play, I'll buy another one just for that. At only $25 this thing is a real deal.A serious mistake is using a soft power button instead of a true On/Off slider, which means this thing is never really off, and that's why they tell you to remove the battery if it's not used for a long time. Come on, let us really turn it off to save the battery!!! That's really serious for pocket radio, in case you want to keep it just for emergencies, only to find the battery dead, because it didn't turn fully off. Maybe they did that because maybe they store the presets in RAM instead of Flash memory, so maybe turning it completely off will make it loose the presets, and if that's why, come one guys, put some flash memory in it, or save a preset file on the SD card if adding some built-in flash is too difficult. Fix the imperfections, and you could charge 2x, 3x, even 4x the price, because you will have true excellence.If they think people want to keep it powered to keep time, I don't even know if it can, because I don't care about that at all. If that's why, you can keep the soft power button, and tell people to use that button when you want to keep the clock running, but use the added On/Off slider to turn it completely off when not using it for a long time.A minor imperfection is they tell you to charge it longer, even after the charge indicator shows full, and if you turn it on radio, it can then still show not fully charged, but turn it off and connect the power cable, and it shows fully charged, so I don't even know if it is charging. I ordered a separate charger and extra BL-5C battery, so I am ignoring that problem. I just hope I don't have to set up all the presets again when I swap in a new battery.So, this radio/SD-card-player comes very close to being super excellent. If they make the Station Presets easier to set, allow the current song to keep playing during file/folder navigation on the SD-card player, store the presets in Flash memory, and put in a true On/Off slider switch, this would really be super-excellent!!

Great sound from a small radio. After purchasing several small radios over the past month, I've had to return them all. Some sounded very tinny while others were plagued with static. I was about to give up until I tried the Retekess115. It has very good sound for such a small radio. No tinny sound and no static unless I'm near some particular electronic devices. I just bought second one since I use one in my upstairs bedroom and bathroom. A second one I use in my kitchen and out on my patio. If they hold up over time I will be thrilled. If you're looking for a small fairly priced radio, this is it. It replaces my Ccrane pocket radio that I have had for many years but recently stopped locking onto station I had it tuned to. I use it only to listen to AM radio. Although I know it has several more functions, those I have not tested.

Few could argue that for the money, the V-115 has a lot of features. It is nice looking and light weight too.I liked the ideas of rechargeable battery, memory card, mp3 playback and record, backlit display and price a lot. This is a nice radio. Recording is simple and quick - a line-in and headphone jack are included. The mini-usb charging and data transfer works fine with my Apple computer both for charging and managing the content of the storage card (it looks just like thumb drive to the computer). Especially nice is that the rechargeable battery is REPLACEABLE!Some problem areas:Battery doesn't play mp3 for more than a few hours per chargeShortwave doesn't seem to pull any stations in my area, but does find active ethernet cables!FM reception is fair, but there is an unacceptable amount of static in the stations that it picks up.AM reception is better than expected, but has a lot of static.Odd menu operation - a back button moves menu down, the forward button moves menu up, but that is a very small detailFor me, the deal breaker is that all audio has annoying distortion in the mid-range of the sound. Highs are decent, lower tones are present, but somehow where the two mix in the middle is fuzzy and broken up just enough to be annoying. Part of the issue is the amplifier and mp3 decoder for mp3 files, but combined with the little speaker, the sound is too corrupted. Old radios dealt with the issue of size and cost by not attempting to even play low bass, while still delivering clear voice and the higher and vocal range of music. Eashh worrtd sshaszz fuzztzz an mudddz, or something like that whether the playback is FM, AM or MP3. The distortion also seems to be exacerbated by mp3 compression on some material.For anyone is in pretty strong broadcast area, doesn't mind keeping it plugged into a USB charger most of the time, and just wants a background noise maker blabberbox while sawing boards, banging on concrete or whipping lug nuts off cars with an airgun, this might just be the ticket. Not so much though if wanting to build that car engine while meditating on a Wagner opera or Bach canon and fugue.I got this to have a way to be less lonely while gluing boards or painting, as a way to just hit the button and have music without paying a lot of money or having to plug in a bunch of stuff all the time, and also not have to recharge my phone as much.The convenience of the all-in one little player and not having to wear down the phone's battery or buy aaa cells is great. It just needs to be a little better quality overall to make it a keeper for me.Three stars still says "It's okay".

I just recently purchased a few portable radios for a job I have been on for some time. With the nature of this job I need a small pocket sized radio.The 1st one I bought was a Jameson analog. But it arrived damaged and looked like it had been used before... Before I returned it I installed 2 AA batteries just to test it out. I live about 35 minutes north of Los Angeles and this radio seemed to get most of the major radio station pretty well. The sound was ok for the pocket size of this unit...kind if hollow but not too tinny if that makes sense.The second one I bought as a replacement was the Sony icf-p36. When it arrived my first impressions were the simple design. This is definitely a sleek simple radio. Since it was a Sony I expected more than this thing put out. The reception was ok...but the sound was worse. While it put out a clean crisp sound on a strong radio signal, the sound was hollow and tinny even more than the previous radio. The sound I predominantly vocal. In other words this radio would be better to listen to talk radio over music. The sound in my opinion fell short and left me wanting more...Now the Tivdio..I gotta say I read all the reviews on this product and the majority of these are correct. The sound is impressive for the size and price. Really! This radio totally blows the 2 previous radios away! The sound is a lot fuller. The music is not all vocal. There is depth to the sound of this little unit. Don't get me wrong it's nothing super crazy, but compared to the other radios this thing is impressive. It comes with a little tab that sticks in the back that allows it to be leaned back. This seriously sounds good in my kitchen. I can't wait to hear it on the jobsite. It has a bunch of cool functions that in my opinion make it fun to play with. Takes some fiddling and reading the instructions to figure it out. The reception is better too! SD card reader, Good reception, rechargeable... Plus you can buy extra batteries online for this unit cheap! It also has a passive radiator on the back which gives it more depth of sound...For the price this thing is totally worth it. Now time will tell how durable it is. Very impressed with this little unit!

Good sound unless near my phone. It shows the frequency number of the station so you can get right to it. I also like that it shows the time too once you get the station. If you use batteries you have to reset the clock, but it's pretty easy to do.

After having this radio for about a month, it's time for a review.I'm pretty sure the radio I received must have been built by someone having a bad day. Fortunately, I got it when there was a pretty decent sale. For quite some time I've heard nothing but good things about Retekess radios, but both this one and the previous one I purchased have both been major disappointments.User manual: It's good! Well done on putting this together!LCD Display: It's functional and the information on it is readable with or without the backlight turned on. But if the backlight is on it generates a lot of noise. As a result, weak stations are washed out and cannot be heard. With that in mind, I need to note that I've had the backlight off as much as possible while using the radio so far.Speaker: Shallow, tinny, lacking bass. They advertise this thing as having a bass speaker, and that seems misleading. Mine sounds like any other low-end, cheap pocket/portable radio.Headphones: No problems with the audio. It sounds good. However, the jack on the radio has a problem, likely a weak solder joint. If there's any moving around, the audio will cut out entirely or go to one ear. My first thought was that my headphone plug was the problem, but I experienced the same issue on two other sets of headphones.Tuning the radio: You have to either scan or input the frequency on the number pad. If you like to crawl through the bands to find weak stations, don't buy this radio. The scan function is very, very inconsistent. One one pass of the FM band it might find 50 stations, and then a few minutes later it'll find 30. And I've found that it often skips over stations that come in loud in clear if I type in the frequency on the number pad.Reception: Honestly, due the inconsistent tuning that I don't even know if I can give a fair judgement of the reception. I have tested it using some stations with which I'm familiar by manually entering the frequencies. I used only the stock telescopic antenna and internal ferrite bar, mainly because I feel like a radio should be able to perform as advertised without an additional hardware involved. On shortwave I found it to do poorly day and night (I suspect this may be due to noise from the LCD even with the backlight turned off), medium wave is a okay during the day and a bit better at night, and FM is not good. I was shocked that the FM side performed as bad as it did! Usually DSP radios are awesome for FM. The FM station I always use for gauging a radio would not come in at all at any time of day, meanwhile it was coming in fairly well on a $9.00 DSP FM-only pocket radio just a few feet away.SD Card: It wouldn't work for me, recognizing none of the cards. I tried a bunch, including a couple that I pulled out of other devices. I went so far as to format one card a few different ways (FAT, NTFS, etc.) but that didn't work either. I verified in the manual and watched some review videos to see if I was somehow inserting the SD cards incorrectly, but as far as I could tell I was doing it right.Recording: I couldn't test this because of the SD card issue.Sleep Timer: This is not something I ever use on any of my radios, but I tested it on this one and it did work.USB Speaker: Like the sleep timer, this worked without any problems. I only used it long enough to make sure it's functional.Conclusion: If you want a radio to set on a shelf and listen to strong stations, it should be fine for you as long as you don't mind tinny audio. If you're into hunting for weak stations, don't buy this radio. Regardless, I'd recommend considering other radios before purchasing this one.