Great Radio!!!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Excellent reception Very Good sound Easy to operate

Cons: A little bit of drift in the tuner when the unit is cold.

The Bottom Line: 
This is an excellent radio for someone that would like to start listening to shortwave broadcasts.

Author's Review
First I will say that I am new to all this radio stuff. I am kind of a "Techno Geek" and I heard a report on NPR about the Shortwave Number Stations a few months back. My wife asked what I wanted for Christmas and I gave her a short list with a shortwave radio on the list. Well Christmas morning I opened up a new Grundig S350 from Radio Shack and boy am I happy. It's a recent build with the defeat for the 90 minute sleep timer. The radio is very easy to operate and the manual is very simple and informative. There is an RF Gain control that comes in very handy with AM and Shortwave reception and the narrow / wide switch also helps finding weak stations. The AM & FM reception are excellent. The radio pulls in distant AM stations clearly and the sound on FM with the mono speaker is very good that will fill a room and there are Stereo Line Out RCA Jacks to connect to your high powered stereo. The Shortwave reception is everything I wanted. The second Channel I tuned in was a Spanish Language Number Station. I have listened to all the big SW Stations (VOA, BBC, Radio Havana etc)and 100's of smaller ones. After 3 weeks of listening I now have the hang of shortwave listening. The tuner does "drift" just a little on Shortwave and AM but after about 15 or 20 minutes of operation it all but goes away. After 50+ hours of operation the battery indicator is still on full. The radio comes with an AC Adapter but I haven't even plugged it in yet and I may not ever use it. I don't have experience with other brands but if you want an excellent all around AM/FM radio with the added bonus of SW and an easy to use analog tuner with digital readout the Grundig S350 is well worth a look.