do you know how some old car designs are
kept in production
in developing nations many years after
they're discontinued in Western markets
for example the original rear-engine
air-cooled Volkswagen Beetle which was
manufactured in Mexico for 25 years
after production ended in Germany, well,
I was hoping the same would be true with
radios, because many of the radios these
days that are manufactured in China
even though they have what looks like an
analog tuning dial
they're actually based on a digital
signal processor
so when you tune this dial it's actually
just telling that digital
chip in it to retune itself to whatever
frequency you're tuning it to
and because the refresh rate of that
system is not instantaneous
you get an annoying choppiness when
tuning across the dial
so I was hoping somewhere in the world
they're still making true
analog radios just like they used to
make back in the '80s and '90s
where you get perfectly smooth tuning
across the dial
so with that in mind I found these two
radios you see here
first is this Panasonic RF-562DD2
their so-called retro design radio
made in indonesia and this
5 Core T-22 radio
made in India. First let's look at this
Panasonic radio
it comes with this nice brown vinyl
carrying case
which you can unsnap and remove. If you
take the radio out it has a chrome
finish grille and knobs on the front
so indeed it's rather late 1960s / early
1970s kind of design
aesthetic. It does come with a carrying
strap as well which would attach
here and here. It covers AM, FM, and
shortwave
from 6 to 18 MHz. It claims to have
a big speaker
on the side it has a mono earphone jack
and a 3.6 volt
DC power input. On the back is the band
switch which is a rather inconvenient
location for it
and it runs on two D-cell batteries
and there you can see Made in Indonesia
and you can tell this is not primarily
meant for Western markets because the
only two languages on the box
are English and Arabic. So is this a true
analog radio? Let's turn it on and
find out
uh-oh, I'm hearing that telltale choppiness
as I tune across the dial
so I'm afraid this is also based on a
digital signal processor chip -- it is not
a true
analog radio and also this so-called
big speaker doesn't really sound that
good. It's rather
shrill and tinny and there's no tone
control to improve it. Now I'll switch over
to AM
and it still has the same choppiness as
we tune
and it has a
very rough and scratchy
sound on AM
that almost sounds like digital aliasing
it's like the kind of sound I used to
get when I would
record audio on my old Sound Blaster
card
at a very low sampling rate. So clearly
that's
another artifact of the digital signal
processor chip in this thing
so unfortunately I think this Panasonic
retro design radio
is a fail. It looks nice, the build
quality seems decent but
it has that annoying digital tuner
choppiness to it and although the AM
reception is pretty good it has that
aliasing
effect which makes it very unpleasant to
listen to
so unfortunately I cannot recommend this
radio
and also I don't know what Amazon was
thinking because they shipped it to me
in this box -- they just slapped a shipping
label on it
they didn't even seal the flap; they just
send it to me like this
in the mail and somehow it arrived in
one piece.
And that leaves this 5 Core radio
whose box somehow got smooshed
even though it was shipped in an outer
box which was not damaged
this is the Pro Series 5 Core
Sound of India multiband portable radio
model T-22 with FM,
AM -- also known as medium wave -- and
shortwave
established since 1984 and certified by
electronics engineers and they even
promote Yoga on the box
it says "Yoga for harmony and peace"
Made in India, "climbing the heights of
quality, performance, trust, and
reliability"
it claims to have a high-range antenna with
high sensitivity and it's more the size
that I was expecting the Panasonic to be
with its claim of having a big speaker
but it's quite a bit smaller than the
5 Core radio and the first thing I notice
is the low quality of the plastics they
use to make this
you can see the handle is not even put
on straight and it has
loose flashing at the edges. It looks like
there's bubbles
in the finish here. Overall, just a cheap,
cheap feeling radio and it was
originally designed to have an
AC 220 volt and a DC 4.5 volt
input but neither of them are provided
they're just
knockout plugs so you can only run this
on batteries. It runs on
two D-cell batteries. It looks like it might
have originally run on
three but for some reason now they only
use
two and there near the band switch
which is also on the back on this one
you can see the low quality of the
plastic moldings
but it was OK tested and they're proud
of their ISO 9001
certification with this sticker here
nonetheless maybe its reception
and sound quality will exceed my
expectations based on
the quality of its cabinet so let's give
it a try
it has a nice clicky power switch on the
volume control
so the radio sounds very
good on FM
very nice rich sound; it's not shrill and
tinny like that Panasonic radio
let's try tuning see if this is a true
analog
tuner
yes, no choppiness! This is a true analog
radio tuner
it gets the classical music station
perfectly clear
and that's not even with the FM antenna
extended
so very good reception on FM -- very good
sound quality
even though it doesn't have a tone
control. So the FM works
very well; let's try AM
or medium wave
it sounds excellent on AM as well and
since it's appropriate
here's our local Indian music station
being played on this
Indian-made radio
just listen to how this digital tuner
tunes in this
weaker AM signal
now compare it to this true analog tuner
I think that proves it right there that
the analog tuner
is better than the digital tuner
I discovered that the shortwave works
a lot better
if you leave the antenna folded up
so it's not like other radios where it
uses this as a shortwave antenna
I think it's only using the internal
ferrite coil antenna
for shortwave
so the shortwave reception is not that
great; it only really picks up the stronger
signals
and the tuning is rather touchy because
it doesn't have fine tuning
but if you can get
a signal turned in on shortwave it
sounds pretty good
and I looked on YouTube and nobody has
reviewed one of these before
so this is the very first review of one
of these Indian-made
5 Core analog radios and I think they
do have a right to be proud of their
Indian-made "incredible sound" radio
even though the quality of their plastic
moldings could certainly use
improvement. And if you want one of these
5 Core radios you can get them on
eBay
they cost about 25 dollars with free
shipping from a U.S.
seller