ATS-405 FM-Stereo/AM/Short Wave World Band Receiver, Silver

Excellent FM reception; great sensitivity and selectivity. I can clearly pick up a 10 watt LPFM station that is located about 17 miles away (I live about 100 feet above average terrain, so it's almost a straight shot from that transmitter to where I live). Good AM reception, but in my experience using the radio over the last few weeks, you won't be pulling in distant AM stations with clear reception. I live in a semi-rural area about 25 miles West of Portland, Ore., and all but the most powerful/close AM stations have a fair amount of static. However, this is a small radio, and it's probably unrealistic to expect any radio of this size to pull in weaker AM stations without much static. I have not tried an external AM loop antenna. The sound reproduction from this radio is amazing. Keep in mind that it's a small radio, so you won't be filling a large room with sound (but it will easily fill a bedroom, small office, master bathroom, or small garage with sound)-- the "sound reproduction" I speak of refers to the quality of the sound, not to the volume produced by the speaker. FM stations that are not over-modulated sound incredible, with clear bass, airy treble, and a warm midrange. When it comes to AM sound reproduction, it's difficult to overstate how fantastic this radio is! If you've never heard AM radio on a wideband tuner such as this, you are in for a treat! I also own a GE Superadio III, and while it probably sounds a tad wider on AM than this Sangean, in all but the most ideal circumstances, the tradeoff with the GE is that you hear monkey chatter and whistles from adjacent AM stations. There are three AM music stations I can tune in where I live, and they all sound amazing on this Sangean. The three bandwidth options, (adjustable) auto gain control, three tone settings, "fine tuning" setting, and local/DX option give you many possible configurations for tuning in and massaging the sound of AM stations. The widest bandwidth setting is listed by Sangean as being 6 KHZ, but this is somewhat misleading because in reality the audio is gently rolled off *starting* at about 6 KHZ (according to my iPhone Frequensee App), plus most AM music stations add audio pre-emphasis in this range, so in reality you are simply hearing "all of the music"; the treble is airy and delightful, and all harmonics are reproduced without audible artifacts. For those less geeky than myself, I'll simply put it this way: You'll hear all of the high notes in AM music, without that "muffled echo" sound that is so common on most modern AM tuners. I did not buy this radio for its shortwave tuner, and I really can't comment in that aspect of it. In summary, this is a great radio for personal use at home, at work, or when traveling, but is not the right radio for playing loud, boomy music-- it's simply too small to do that. FM will not disappoint, and when you have a strong signal, AM sounds absolutely incredible. Highly recommended.

Excellent portable radio for travel. Solidly built, nice silver finish, buttons are spaced well and the battery compartment is easy to open. The sound is good on AM and FM. I don't use SW much because I can't get a lot of stations. I like that it takes rechargeable AA size NiMH batteries instead of the flat Lithium batteries that always seem to swell after a year. It is very easy to set alarm and back light is light color with black letters., not the weird orange or yellow color like other radios. The case is an very nice and it fits well in my total size is about 7-1/2" long and 4-1/2" high. Great tuning buttons. I love it better than any other portable radio I have ever owned. Too bad the display backlight stopped working and the charge indicator light also. Lucky it came with an AC adapter. I use it as a back up radio

I like the Sangean ATS-405, and my opinion of it has grown over time. CAUTION: The Amazon product description is wrong. It says: "Full Band Coverage from 150 kHz - 29999 kHz." There is no longwave coverage (150 kHz to 510 kHz) and shortwave tops out at 26100 kHz, not 29999. But it indeed does cover all 14 shortwave broadcast bands (not CB). It's an older model (it came out in 2015), but I picked it because it has some options not usually found on other radios: the ability to set the squelch level and options for tuning mute and soft mute. These have proven unimportant, but other features have come to the front. It also has an automatic gain control (AGC) setting, an advanced feature valuable in receiving some signals that are rapidly changing in strength. One strong feature of the ATS-405 is the display. It is bright and easy to read in the dark (with the display light) as well as in full sun. The information on the display is just what you need, and in particular it tells you the setting of the Local/DX switch (so you don't accidentally have it set to Local). The bandwidth setting is there along with the signal strength. A quick button press switches to the clock display. At first I was concerned that the radio had no tuning wheel, only up and down buttons. I've reversed my opinion. Radios like this use a digital signal processing (DSP) chip that tune only discrete channels. A tuning knob can be tricky to use with DSP radios, sometimes skipping a channel or not advancing; however, with a button press you're always assured you've incremented one channel. A long-press of one of the buttons tells the radio to scan for the next available station. The radio also has a fine tuning setting, allowing increments of 1 kHz rather than the usual 10 kHz spacing. Advanced users may use direct frequency entry rather than band scanning anyway. I've compared shortwave sensitivity with some of my other radios: Eton Elite Executive, Tecsun PL-660 and Tecsun PL-330. The Sangean is a bit less sensitive, but not by much. It's the best of the lot on MW. Other positives: Included AC adapter/charger, included case, two alarms (one buzzer and one radio) and dedicated display light button (top of radio). You can also set the display light to be always on or off after 10 or 20 seconds. Unlike many modern shortwave radios, the ATS-405 manual is well-written, informative and in good English. It uses and can recharge 4 AA batteries. Negatives: My unit had a small defect.; the BAND button is erratic, sometimes requiring multiple or extra firm presses. The audio quality is not the best among my similar-sized portables. The Automatic Tuning Storage of stations in memory is only available for FM and MW, and not for SW, and there are only 36 memory locations for each band. In many locations, one would run out of FM memory locations long before reaching the end of the band. Direct entry of a frequency requires two extra button presses in addition to the digits. It does not have an external antenna jack. My unit, and apparently most of them, has a birdie (internal interference) on 800 kHz and 1600 kHz, so I cannot listen to one local MW radio station at 800 kHz. The elephant in the room is the lack of single sideband (SSB) reception, making it useless for listening to Amateur Radio, utility broadcasts, and other non-broadcast radio services. It's a radio for local and international broadcast listening. Value? If I had $80 to spend on a radio today, I might look at something like the XHDATA D-808 or the Tecsun PL-330. Both are more modern radios and both have SSB. The PL-330 has an excellent Enhanced Tuning Mode (ETM+) to scan and store stations by time of day. The D-808 has RDS and Air band, plus a louder speaker. If I were trying to match features, I'd be more inclined towards something like the Radowow/Sihuadon R-108 in the $50 range. If you want an interesting radio, a stellar performer on MW and a radio that's easy on the eyes, then you might consider the Sangean ATS-405 I'm glad I have one.

I ordered the ATS-405 from Amazon USA because of the price and availability. I received it yesterday and the first thing I noticed was that the AC power adapter was rated 120VAC mains and 7.5V AC 700mA output. The power connector on the radio says 7.5V ~ /0.7A (the ~ means AC). I thought this was quite unusual, as all the radios I came across have a DC power input. As my local AC mains is 230V AC, using this AC adapter is risky and the output would be about 14.3V and this could damage the radio. I could use a step down transformer from 230V to 120V but it would look ugly. I am really disappointed with Sangean in this case for using AC power on the radio. I guess now I would have to use NiMH batteries and charge them externally. I ordered Varta NiMH AA and they should arrive soon. I tested the radio with 4 AA Alkaline batteries and my first impression is that this radio looks cheap. The casing is light plastic with silver finish. A drop on the floor could crack it no doubt. As mentioned by others, the FM radio sounds great. I just wish Sangean would have added RDS to it. I like the possibility to store 36 channels for each band (FM, MW and SW). Finding live SW channels was a bit of a challenge, as more and more countries have stopped broadcasting in SW and moved on to internet radio. It is probably a lot cheaper this way. I managed to listen to Radio NHK in Japanese loud and clear in the evening. I am not going to return it, but I think I should have bought it from Amazon Germany because they usually have the right AC mains power for me. I would recommend this model for someone in the USA because of the price, but they should review other models first.

My out of the box impressions of this Sangean DSP portable radio are that it looks nice and sounds great when receiving strong stations. The radio has a good weight and feel but its case is noticeably plastic. The radio's buttons are responsive with the exception of the tuning buttons. I found I had to press them repeatedly in order to tune however I'm hoping that problem will get better once they are broken in a bit. The radio's display is large and easy to read except when it's backlit and you are looking straight at it then it completely disappears. This was almost THE deal breaker for me until I understood that this radio's display is meant to be read with the radio propped up on its kickstand. I didn't find this radio to be particularly sensitive on AM during my daytime tuning experimentation. The radio was only able to hear 1 local AM station and on SW it couldn't hear or lock onto any stations. I expect this will improve during nighttime listening hours. The radio was able to hear a number of local FM stations and those came in crisp, clear, and natural sounding. I found the radio fairly easy to understand and program and I like that it gives you a choice of a 12hr or 24hr clock. As a plus, the radio comes with an A/C adapter and will charge rechargeable batteries inside the radio while the radio is plugged in and turned off. It also conveniently runs on alkaline batteries. In my opinion there are probably other under $100 radios that may offer equal or better value/$ than this radio but if you are looking for a sharp looking direct entry DSP portable radio with some interesting features to play with and you don't mind giving up a tuning knob this radio could be for you. UPDATE: With an external antenna clipped to the radio's telescoping antenna nighttime SW listening is greatly improved! The value/$ of this purchase just went up for me. I will be keeping this radio in my collection. UPDATE 3/23: After owning this radio for 2 years I am enthusiastically increasing my rating to 5 stars. This is a fun and rugged little radio. While there is a small learning curve to getting the most out of the ATS 405, it's well worth the effort. Of note, with no external antenna connected, I find the ATS 405's nighttime AM reception to be BETTER than the much more expensive Sangean ATS 909X2. 2 years on, the radio is still preforming like a champ and all of the buttons are working just fine. If you don't need SSB, save yourself a load of cash and pick up the ATS-405.

The radio will not recognize the presence of batteries - either alkaline or NiMH rechargeables - so it will not operate without AC power. Returned the first, got another - same condition existed. Tried resets, different brands of AA batteries etc. Nothing worked. Additionally, with fresh (fully charged Energizer) NiMH rechargeable batteries inserted, the screen indicator showed the "empty battery" symbol. Plugging in the AC supply and switching to charge mode showed a charging operation was initiated, but suspended after a few seconds. So no possibility of charging the batteries inside the radio. Called the Mfr. Tech Rep for help, and he admitted some radios have exhibited this condition, but could not offer a solution. He did not offer a replacement radio. Amazon has a great return policy, so I could continue returning and reordering until I got one that works. With this kind of quality and customer service, what would induce me to try again? HOW LONG would it continue to work??? Buy something else and avoid the headache!

Upon opening the package, the first surprise is just how tiny this radio is. The materials, fit and finish are good, but some of the plastic is cheap looking. The second surprise is how heavy it is for its size. I read the instruction manual cover to cover and then loaded my batteries and turned on the unit, which took a few seconds to wake up for the first time. It was then that i realized this is really a computer that does radio. … I selected the FM broadcast band and let it scan through the stations. With the telescoping antenna, it picked up stations 50 miles away at full scale. I switched to the a.m. band I was delighted to hear my favorite AM stations that were 80 miles away in broad daylight. Later at night, I scanned and stored strong signals from the a.m. radio band and was delighted to find that my favorite stations were all there in memory . There’s a very short learning curve. Just read the manual once or twice and try all of the features for yourself. I like, especially that you use your own batteries and there is not some weird internal battery that predicts the life of the radio. This radio will charge rechargeable batteries and run off AC power if necessary. I think you will like this radio and I agree that it’s well worth the money at $75. It might look like a radio that cost half that price but it is not. Buy this one instead of that tempting $30 junk

Why did you pick this product vs others?: I thought it was a real shortwave all purpose radio. Instead it has no single side-band or VHF I do not recommend it as a short ave radio. AM/FM is fine, shortwave very limited. .

This radio works well and its quality reminds me of an earlier generation of Sony and Panasonic radios. For the price level, I find the product an excellent value, and it’s my travel radio of choice around the house or sometimes outside. It strikes a good balance between lightweight portability and capable reception with decent sound quality. I’m fully satisfied with this purchase.

راديو جميل ورائع خاصة هذا الموديل القديم مع جودة في الصوت مع استهلاك في البطاريات الجافة

Embora seja compacto, é um bom rádio portátil para escutas e prático por usar pilhas AA, com a possibilidade de recarregá-las no aparelho. Recomendo.

最近のDSPには飽きた人には最適です。 IFを3段階切り替えられるのは◎です。 強い隣接局をカットできます。 感度もループアンテナAN-200との組み合わせでABC 4QD 1548KHzを受信できました。 FMバンドは日本向けではないですが、ワイドFMが主流なのであまり困りません。

Es muy buen producto es muy lijero compacto y muy buena recepción en frecuencias AM FM y SW lo recomiendo para todos los que se aventuran al campo al bosque o montañas lo recomiendo 100%