Kaito KA108 Super Sound quality AM FM Shortwave Radio with MP3 Player and Radio Recorder, Radio Time Schedule Recorder,Alarm Clock+ More

I bought this solely to use as an FM radio recorder. It's the only thing out there except for the much more expensive C Crane Witness 2 as far as I can tell. Here's the dope:The FM sound quality is outstanding. When I played it through my home stereo system it was very good. The sensitivity isn't great but I live in the city and all nearby stations came in just fine. The DSP tuning on the FM band is truly a breakthrough in radio technology.The scheduled recorder is bare bones but it works. The first hurdle was getting a micro SD card that was compatible. I eventually reformatted a 2GB Sandisk card as Master Boot Record and FAT. That did the trick. You set the radio on the station you want to record. Lower the volume to 1 because when the timer kicks in the radio will play. Set the timer by hour and minute. Next set the duration the choices 1,15,30,60,90,120 or 180 minutes.Sadly, there are no functions for scheduling on a different day or repeat recording. You can only set one recording and you have to leave the radio tuned to the desired station.The recording quality is good. There are no options that I can see in the menu. It makes 128kbps mpegs (mp2/layer1) at 32KHz. The files are just numbered in order without any metadata.Mine came with a dead battery (standard old school cell phone batteries). I am going to send it back. If it had more robust scheduling options, I would ask for an exchange but since it can't do repeat recordings, I will opt for a refund instead.

This radio has so much potential but really needs to improve on some key features. I suspect my radio has a defect with the MP3 playback (as described below) so it’s going back. I would like to replace it with another of the same model but I think I will wait to see if they can improve some of the AM audio quality problems first.The pros:-- Nice size, a pocket radio. When placed on a flat surface it stands up on its own.-- Literally hundreds of presets.-- Great reception on FM. This radio has the ability to bring in and keep separation of many weak FM stations.-- Impressive audio output with its small speaker. Also sounds good through headphones, including stereo from FM & MP3 files.-- Provides for MP3/WAV input from micro SD and/or thumb drive.-- It uses a replaceable phone-type battery with a 1000 mAh capacity which is enough for hours of playback using headphones.-- Ability to record what is being played through the radio, and ability to schedule to record a broadcast that might be several hours away.The cons:-- Poor sound quality on AM & SW bands. The sound, either through the speaker or through headphones, is so muffled that both bands are difficult to listen to. I didn’t purchase this radio to listen to SW band anyway, but I have several AM stations that I like to listen to and would like to have decent AM-band performance. Since this radio can record its broadcasts I tried recording a few minutes of the AM band using a strong station. When I played the recording back there was no improvement in sound quality. It was just as muffled as before when playing either through the radio or by playing through computer speakers.-- Inconsistent playback looping when playing MP3 files. The manual describes procedures to repeat playback of a single MP3 file; repeat playback at the end of all files; or no repeat. At times I could get the playback to continue from one file to the next, but after playing a few files it would begin repeating the same file. When I would try to enter the number for another file it would sometimes take it, and sometimes not (most often not). The only way I found to get it back to normal play was to turn the radio off and then back on again – and that didn’t always work. Because of this I am returning the radio.-- Since the radio has such a good sound on FM & MP3 files through its little speaker it would be nice if it were to have longer battery life. When the volume is dialed up about halfway up the scale, say 12 to 15 for tabletop listening, the output through the speaker is only about 3 or 4 hours. It will play while being charged but on AM there is such a loud buzzing, and on SW a loud rushing sound that those bands are not usable. If a second battery were available and charged up it could be changed out to extend listening.I will definitely buy another of the same model to replace this radio but I think I will wait until I hear that they have improved the problems with the AM band.

I'm giving this four stars because it works perfectly for my application. My favorite talk radio program comes on an FM station at midnight but I rarely stay up that late. I don't podcast it because i live in the country with 4G internet and have a limited amount of data.So after a quick and easy setup, and slipping in an 8Gig micro sd card, the radio has perfectly recorded the program automatically for the last several nights and it's so nice to fast forward through the commercials!FM audio quality is great. Close to the Meloson, same kind of high excursion micro-speaker with passive bass radiator.Now the bad:AM and short wave audio quality is abysmal. Literally sounds like the radio has been sealed up in a box full of foam rubber. Unusable for that reason alone. I have not tried to record on AM and then pull the sd card to listen on another device to see if the recording sounds as bad.Mute-with-each-tuning-step which makes tuning around the band all but impossible but expected on a cheap digital.Plugging in the battery charger generates a lot of static so if you leave it to record a show, make sure the battery is charged because if it records while plugged in, you get three hours of static.So. If you need to automatically record a show on FM. This does that beautifully. It's small, easy to use and program, and the FM audio is great. If you need it to do anything on AM /SW Look elsewhere.

Simply put, this is a piece of junk, and Kaito should be ashamed of selling it. The radio reception is on a par with a sub $10.00 radio. Add to that the audio quality sounding distant and poor. The mp3 abilities are an atrocity as the buttons don't function properly. No matter what button you press (play, ff, rw) there is a high chance that it will return you to the beginning of the track you are playing.Buy the Kaito KA 29 model, which is superior in every way and cheaper.