jckatz's Full Review: Sony Walkman SRF-HM01V AM/FM/Weather/TV Radio
Never in my life have I been more tempted to write a review that sad nothing but this sucks don’t buy it over and over again until I reached my minimum word requirement.
But that is not my style but I repeat this sucks and don’t buy it!!!!!!
I shall start with describing why I purchased my first $50 walkman. All my life I have purchased cheap portable radios. I signed up at the YMCA and broke two cheap radios in about a month.
So I went to K-mart. I knew I didn’t want a tape player since I don’t own any tapes and I didn’t want a CD player because I wanted something small (either armband or headphone only). My last radio was a $9.99 analog armband unit I purchased at the local grocery store. It was great but on the treadmill the radio tuner started to move off its station.
So I made a list of what I wanted
1) Armband or headphone only radio receiver
2) Digital tuner
3) Quality so it wouldn’t break
Here is what I got
1) the SONY® Street Style SRF-HM01V Personal Radio
a. street style means the headbands wrap around the back of the head not over the head, that style was very popular when I lived in NY and it looks nicer.
2) Digital tuner
a. It tunes AM (Yeah Right) FM (BARELY) TV (NEVER) and WEATHER
b. PAIN in the BUT!!!!!
i. The thing has a mode button (pre-sets or manual tune) since a nice jostle will cause the batteries to slip and you will lose your preset I don’t recommend taking the time to use them
ii. To switch from FM to AM you only have to hit the BAND button 4 times! But not to worry since you won’t receive ANYTHING via AM band or TV band or Weather band so you might as well stay at the FM band.
3) Well I am sad to say it hasn’t broke.
When I have a radio I like it breaks but this over price piece of human excrement is still working. I can’t justify purchasing another radio since I paid $50 for this one but I hate it.
Just how bad is this radio?
I live 3.1 miles from the broadcast antenna of my local National Public Radio Station, don’t believe me here is the Map Quest http://snurl.com/1jso.
Yet if I turn my head or bend it I get other radio stations almost as clear as I get NPR (great digital tuning batman!) . This weekend I was taking a walk (even closer to the antenna that normal in the woods away from power lines and buildings. Every time I bent my head to take a sip of water I would get an Auto Race. I do not know if I was getting an FM or AM or maybe a TV station.
It was getting so annoying I decided to try to get an AM station. I set auto scan (hold down the tune, it will move until it finds a station. Didn’t find one station! Not one! I was able to manually tune in stations but they were full of static. Even stations that broadcast from Springfield!
The unit does have a DX and local radio switch DX is for stations a long distance away, since I can only receive NPR on DX will assume that long distance is anything further than 1 or 2 blocks.
I noticed that I am not the first fool at Epinions.com to purchase this static box, and they all had the same problem. That being said, WHY in G-ds name does Sony® still sell it. They must be aware it doesn’t work?
This is my guess.
It retails at $60, it looks cool and it has the Sony® logo on it. People like me will assume it works, and purchase it.
Therefore it is my and Epinions' duty to tell you.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!DON’T PURCHASE THIS RADIO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Heck better yet, if this is the type of product SONY® is selling don’t purchase any SONY® products, they can no longer be trusted.
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