Retekess V115 Shortwave Radio, Digital Radio AM FM

This is a great portable radio with good sound and lots of features--AM, FM, SW, recording options on micro SD card. Highly recommended for its price.

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!!

I bought this mostly to play music and ebooks. I like the radio reception as well, its better than most especially for its size. I live on a hill that blocks most of the radio stations, I was surprised that this unit received stations I can't usually pick up on the FM.Sound quality is amazing for the size of the enclosure and the size of the driver. I found it will play mp3,wav and wma. it does not claim to do FLAC or MP4 (aac) files and in fact won't cause I tried it...I had a problem with the sd card not latching in place after I removed it a couple times. I opened it and found there is a small metal tab that provides tension on the spring bar that latches the sd card. I pushed that metal tab down a bit with a tiny screwdriver and it works fine again.I picked up a couple spare batterys, looks like I'll be using this for a good while. I have a pi-pirate radio, 3 or 4 Logitech squeezebox streaming radios, a jvc, etc,etc.as far as computer radios go , this one doesn't lag as much as the others, the fidelity is great on playback and the controls are easy to figure out after a bit of messing about with it .sound reproduction is better than an Ihome ipod dock I've got it next to. Overall for less than the price of a case of beer or a couple bottles of fine sparkling cold duck, what we've got here is an outright entertainment bonaza, that fits in your pocket.I liked it so much I gave my brother one.doesn't pickup much on the shortwave, but thats not really what I bought it for.all in all a dandy radio for office, kitchen or garage, even fits under the pillow if you like audiobooks.one of the better radio products I've used, especially at its price point. Great travel radio.edit 3/25/2020 - well I now own 2 of these little babies. so to keep them straight. I did a little cosmetic modto one of them and colored in the indentations on the Volume rocker and the transport buttons.I used a white Sharpie (oil based) and a half a dozen q-tips dipped in alcohol for cleanup. I tried masking but my mad skills weren't up to it, turned out it was easier to just apply carefully the paint, then let it dry and remove the overage with the qtips. I wound up doing 2 coats to get sufficient coverage. not bad for 20 minutes work at the most, and it makes it easy to see which one is which at a glance.

There is a word I'm searching for, to describe the combination of mild aggravation and disappointment at reviewing a product that has the potential to be great, but isn't. Yet.It's not common to have in a pocket sized radio, the combination of ported speaker, MP3 using a microSD slot, AM tuner with swivel antenna, station scan, USB cable, rechargeable internal battery and a numeric keypad. For this I'm grateful. So it's a bit puzzling why we have not gone all in to include a clock and alarm, better MP3, tone control and memory card included.The biggest short coming though is in the MP3 section where your entire file (album) hierarchy is flatten out, with selections labeled by file name, not by album / artist / track number / track name. You can either navigate sequentially to get to say file 367 out of 513, or you can type in "367" ">||" if you somehow knew that is what you wanted. A bit quirky, there is one button over on the right that switches between repeating the current play and repeating the entire card content (I assume). No such thing as a play list.So the biggest improvement to the product would be to build up MP3 support: album hierarchy, field display and play list.Documentation could use some work. Beyond the typical language issues, the key functions and menus could use more explanation. A strange shortcoming (in documentation) regards the USB functions, which I would think to be major selling points but I don't find mentioned anywhere, either in the tech docs, the packaging or the marketing bullets. Briefly...- Charging occurs over the USB cable. Duh.- A computer can & will recognize your radio as a USB device. Sequence: insert memory card, turn on the radio, connect the USB cable.- In my case, the Windows XP operating system saw the radio with memory card as a combination 1) storage device, 2) audio device, and 3) HID device, a control panel. This means that...- The radio mounts into the directory system and you can drag&drop MP3 files to your microSD card. Btw, no other (internal) storage was visible so I have to assume that there isn't any.- The radio's speaker will play over the USB line what would otherwise be played thru the computer's speakers. This was convenient in my case because my tower computer doesn't have its own speakers. I could do file management simultaneous with audio streaming. No description or labeling associated with the audio stream were displayed. Needs development of such feature. There appears to be a quirk (somewhere), in that the device will not switch from over-the-air broadcast to USB streaming. Instead you must follow the above sequence exactly, by first switching to MP3 play (thus requiring that you plug in a memory card), then connecting up the USB cable.- Because its an HID device, the radio's buttons are recognized by the computer OS. Specifically the navigation buttons can/will operate the computer's (media player) application, and the volume control will control the, uh, volume. At the source, btw. The ultimate effect will be that the radio's output will change.Other notables...- Actual device is branded "Audiomax" not "TIVDIO".- Actual device is labeled SRW-710S, whereas this Amazon listing has at least some references to a V-115.- Does not come with a memory card. Seems a marketing oversight, given how inexpensive cards are.- As a result, the record function is not available out-of-the-box. Definitely a marketing faux pas. Either include a card or add internal support.- I've proven that 32G works in the radio, but 64G will get rejected. This is typical with a broad swath of electronic products and OS's.- I did not observe RDS, the ability to grab song titles out of broadcasts. Needs development of such feature.

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.

Love this radio. Very good sound for a small radio. Pulls in am stations at night almost as well as radios that I have that cost 5 times the price. FM sounds excellent. Haven't really pursued sw too much but maybe this summer I'll give it a try with an additional long wire antenna. Also an excellent emergency radio.

Great player. Sound is good. AUX input is good.Station memorization is a pain.The Retekess MP3 player plays files in the order in which they were copied to the FMRECORD folder.You can override this default behavior as follows:1. Rename the files to the order desired by prefixing the filenames with leading zeros.For example: "00001 File1.mp3", "00002 File2.mp3", etc.I use the excellent MP3Tag application for this, but they can be renamed by any method.2. Then, on Windows, you can use the DriveSort utility.As this is an unsigned application Windows will ask if you are sure you want to run it.Open the disk containing the files.In my case this was the microSD card containing the files. The disk type should be FAT32.Double-click the folder where the files to be sorted are stored. In my case this was D:\FMRECORD.Select Folder > Sort, which sorted the files in the folder by Long Name by default. (See DriveSort's home page for more info if necessary).Select Folder > Save.3. Safely eject the drive.Upon reinstalling the microSD card in the Retekess player, the files in the FMRECORD folder,now sorted in FAT32 order by your desired sorting order, will now play in that order.