Degen DE1123 DSP AM/FM/SW Pocket Radio with 1GB MP3 Player & Recorder

Easy to use, adding station memories, click etc. Receives AM and FM well. Sounds great with impressive volume range. Love the lock feature, Toss it around or put in pockets, no worry about volume or stations getting changed. Quality feel. Bought for radio record feature but it's a great portable radio, player. Controls are intuitive. Battery cover is one thing you have to watch not to lose, it doesn't close very secure.

This Degen is a nice compact (shirt pocket sized) little radio. I was in the market for a FM pocket sized radio with good quality and in my search I found this one, it was not much more price wise and had Short Wave (Which is also an interest of mine) MW (AM) a voice recorder and MP3 capabilities. Its the perfect size I was looking for its only slightly bigger the an I-POD classic, fits easily in a shirt pocket, it was some weight to it, so its not flimsily. Sound in the speaker is pretty good, its 50 mm and it produces a descent sound. It DX's in FM station really well, does good with middle wave (AM) (I live in a location with bad reception-one reason I got this radio is I have an Sirius XM radio and I transmit it around the house and property and I can listen to it on FM it works perfectly) and the short wave is to be expected in that it DX's in the big boomers, your probably not going to DX in far away lower powered stations, but its not bad. Its pretty easy to use and there's lots of per sets on all three bands. The MP3 recorder is easy to use, you just plug it into your computer and drag music into its folder. Battery life (rechargeable) is very good, You can get 10-15 hours, or more. It takes 7 hours to fully charge and more if you use the computer like 9-10 hours. Its not a bad radio at all.

I was looking for a device that could record a day's worth of AM radio programming in a digital format. This radio seemed to have the capabilities to do this. But as I discovered, it fell far short of expectations. The shortcomings of this radio are as follows;1. If you wish to record a radio show, the maximum recording time is about 2 hours unless you manually stop the recording periodically and restart the recording on a new track. Doing this will give you another 2 hours of recording time before you have to repeat this process again. You can't just start recording radio programming and walk away for the day. You'll end up with only 2 hours of recorded radio programming. By the way, even if you could walk away for the day, the batteries would die after a few hours.2. During playback of recorded material, if the radio is turned off (or the batteries go dead), the recording starts at the beginning of the track when the radio is turned back on. The fast forward is slow, so it can take some time to get back to the place that you left off in the recording.3. This radio is power hungry in the record and playback mode. Unfortunately, it's powered by 3 AAA batteries instead of more robust AA batteries, so the batteries go dead long before a day of listening or recording is over. In my opinion, the short battery life is the biggest annoyance of this radio. I would have returned the radio for this shortcoming alone.4. The audio speaker is one of the worst I've heard in recent years. It sounds very tinny and cheap.5. The instructions are poorly translated from Chinese. They are challenging to understand. Because this radio is not intuitive, you must be able to understand the instructions to use it.6. The tuning steps on AM (called MW on this radio) are set for foreign countries. You must manually set the tuning steps for the U.S. broadcast standard. If this isn't done, there are many AM stations that cannot be tuned in. If you don't understand what I'm talking about here, wait till you try to figure this out from the Chinglish instructions.7. When the batteries go dead (which happens frequently) all the radios' settings go back to factory default, including the aforementioned tuning steps. Everything must be reset, very annoying.8. The instructions say that the AC power supply is only for charging the batteries. It says that the AC power supply causes interference on the radio and so cannot be used in lieu of the short-lived batteries for recording radio programs.9. The tuner of this radio covers the Short Wave radio spectrum. But the wimpy telescoping antenna is useless for receiving Short Wave bands. I was unable to receive any Short Wave radio signals. There is no provision for an external antenna.All in all, this radio represents a great idea that is very poorly executed. I give it one star. I am returning it to Amazon.

Bought mine, and then returned it. Sound quality was OK, but without a timer feature, the MP3 function is not all that useful. Also, the users manual was worse than useless. Probably not a bad product for the price, but considering its lack of MP3 timer, I'll stick with my little shirt-pocket Grundig AM/FM/SW.

Very good AM and FM performance for its size and price range. SW performance is adequate but subject to interference from strong/local AM radio stations. Very sensitive with just its short whip antenna. Digital recording and playback features are just basic. Does not support scheduled, unattended digital recording. Speaker audio ok for size, audio generally fine with headphones. Some distortion at low levels in AM band. Computer connection not well documented in manual; worked properly with Windows XP; compatibility with other computer OS's not known. No numeric keypad or rotary tuning knob. Seems solid and well made. Its compact size is a key feature. If size is less important, there are other better performing radios in this price class, although none with digital recording/playback features.

Not easy of use, the digital numbers stop works after 2 days.I do not recommend.Good idea bad construction and poor quality!

Ive read the other reviews here And I disagree with most of them. There is no doubt that this slim compact but solid feeling device could not well stand being dropped often but I find the build quality excellent and I like the basic black design. I love the crisp green backlight.Playback over the speaker, though lacking much bass is very clear and carries well. I can set it on my work bench and listen unencumbered by headphones. Inspite of its chinglish I found the manual fairly easy to understand for what I want to do. Fm reception is excellent for a portable this size and am is decent but doesnt compare to my eton e100. My only complaint is the short battery life but at least it holds the settings long enough to slip in new batteries (quickly) and it comes with rechargeable batteries and charger. To listen to radio, mp3 music files and emusic audiobooks it is a great unit with really no competition unless you want to spend quite a bit more money; I don't. I highly recommend it.