Tecsun PL398MP DSP Digital AM/FM/LW Shortwave Radio with Dual Speakers & MP3 Player, Black

Me gusto. Tiene buena recepcion y sobre todo, es bastante sensible. asi que funciona perfecto para escuchar emisoras AM lejanas

I originally ordered this because I love my Grundig G2, and I really like mini-boomboxes. I am a MW and SW enthusiast, so there's that. The Tecsun PL-398 is a terrific radio for SW and MW listeners and DXers. It also works very well on FM, but I don't listen to a ton of FM, my experience with this radio is mainly on MW and SW.The PL-398MP has good sensitivity, even off the whip is pulls in SW stations well. It outperforms my G2, which is terrific off the whip. Just this a.m. I used the Tecsun to hear a SW station out of Madagascar, broadcasting in Russian to Eastern Europe, and it was readable -- just off the whip. I also heard Saudi R. Int'l broadcasting to Turkey in Turkish. Just off the whip. It's an example that this radio is quite capable.The PL-398 has several bandwidths, 6, 4, 3, 2, and 1 khz. The sensitivity seems to go up a hair with each reduction in bandwicth, the tradeoff being the audio treble drops a bit. I've found it useful to switch the bandwidth to 4 khz and tune a SW band (or MW) and then reduce to fit. The 6 khz is a bit trebly on my headphones, but sounds a lot better on the stereo speakers. It's nice to have that flexibility.The only 'drawback' is the tuning. The PL-398 doesn't seem to tune in channels, i.e. on the MW band it doesn't tune in 10 or 9 khz increments. And on SW it doesn't tune in 5 or 10 khz increments. You just have the tuning knob which goes 'fast' or 'slow', and it's like the old Realistic DX-440, it just goes where it wants to go, although it sticks to 1-6 khz increments when you tune, which is enough to get up the band. The tuner goes in 1 khz increments if you tune slowly, 4-7 or so khz when you tune quickly, and a little more if you really speed up the tuning knob.It take a bit of getting used to, but it's not a deal breaker for me. On SW I switch the radio to 6 or 4 khz and tune fast, that way I won't miss a station because the wider bandwidth selection will pick more up. I usually tune through MW or a SW band channel by channel, anyway, so I don't miss anything. I can always direct-enter a higher frequency if I want to jump to the higher part of the 31 Meter Band, for example. So the tuning knob "fast or slow" thing doesn't bother me. I've gotten used to it.It supposedly has 9 khz / 10 khz on MW, but being that this radio doesn't appear to tune in 9 or 10 khz increments on MW (it tunes in 1 khz increments when you turn the tuning knob slowly, and 4-7 or so kHz increments when you speed it up), the only difference that switching from 9 to 10 makes is the built-in thermometer goes from degrees C to F and vice versa. If there is indeed a capability to tune in 9, 10, or 5 khz increments I haven't found it yet. The manual seems to be for an earlier version of the radio, because it describes buttons that don't exist on mine. They obviously changed the labelling of the buttons after printing the manual. Not a deal breaker for me, as most of the manual is fairly easy to follow, but others may notice the same thing when reading the manual.As for the tuning, there may be some way to tune in channels, i.e. 9/10 khz on MW, and 5/10 khz on SW, and I just haven't figured out the buttons to push to get it to tune that way.The PL-398MP has several automatic tuning features I just don't use -- where you press a button and the radio scans and stores stations into memory. I never have used these features on any radio. You can direc-enter a frequency, just pressing the numbered buttons on the front of the radio, and if the station is broadcasting, it's instantly there. The up and down arrows in the upper right part of the front panel are handy from moving from one SW broadcast band to the next one up or down (i.e., going from 49 Meters to 31 Meters to 25 Meters, etc.).The memory feature is easy to use, when entering stations into memory -- press the "M" button, hold it a bit, and the frequency will be entered in the next empty memory spot. You access the memories by switching from "VF" to "VM" -- which means you're going from tuning through the frequencies to 'tuning' through the memories you've stored. "VM" uses the tuner knob to go through the memories; "VF uses the tuner knob to tune the band by frequency.I'm a MW DXer and the PL-398 is good for MW DXing. Being that it tunes in 1 khz increments, it's easy to go from channel to channel on MW. The sound is good on my headphones, and the bandwidth switching works well. The radio works well with an external loop -- you have to listen for the loudness in the programming to peak the external antenna. The internal loopstick is very directional, and nulls stations really well. I haven't done a ton of MW DXing with it yet, but it appears to be very capable of this.The radio also has Longwave (very cool!) but I haven't tried that yet. You have to have the radio OFF to switch it from MW to LW. Not that big a deal.The radio seems to do well on 3 AA's, and it has a capability of charging 3 rechargeable AA's, too, which is pretty cool.It seems to be built really well. The signal meter is new, at least to me. The DBu / DB thing. It appears that the DB side of the meter -- to the right -- measures the signal of the broadcast audio over the noise level. the DBu on the left seems to measure all of it. When there is an empty SW channel with nothing but static, it will read 5-10 DBu or so, while the right hand side of the signal meter reads zero. So the left side looks at everything, the right side sees the carrier and audio. Or at least that's how it seems. Pretty handy feature, which I guess has been on Tecsuns for ages, but I'm still getting used to using it.Overall, I think this mini-boombox is a great radio for any SWL, or MW DXer, and if it's like other Tecsuns on FM, FM enthusiasts probably would like it, too.Last but not least, the PL-398 will play MP3's off of an SD card. I haven't tried this yet, but it makes it closer to the old boomboxes of the 80s and 90s where you listened to the radio or you popped in a cassette. Very cool to include as a feature.I hope this helps some radio fans out there in deciding about the PL-398.

Very well build. No problem to tune in local Radio stations. MP3 player works great.Happy with radio and mp3 player.

This radio offers good sound (proper reception in your area is required). It works very well with ni-mh rechargable batteries and it also charges them. What it doesn't do is come with any rechargeable batteries or at least a cable and mains adapter for recharging those batteries. This is because using ni-mh cells is offered as a secondary option for powering the radio. That means you will have to have your own separate batteries, Mini USB to USB cable, and USB mains adapter if you wish to use it this way. For me it wasn't the most intuitive operation for a radio but taking the time to read the user manual sorted everything out in such a way that setting and enjoying all the features now seems straight forward. Do not expect iPod like controls for the mp3 playback. You can only play files in the original order (the order they've been written on the sd card). Also the radio doesn't show any file info so if you want to find out the title or anything else about the track you'll probably have to Shazam it. It gets five stars from me because it does everything it says it should nothing else and it does it well.

finally able to hear 4bc