shortwave and all-hazard radios

My local Wal-Mart store in Naples, Florida is selling Midland WR-10 Weather Radios for two bucks ($2.00) each! (The radio originally sold for about 30 bucks at Wal-Mart).

I bought about a dozen of them to pass out to my friends. The radio does EXACTLY what it's intended to do...give weather information and weather alerts, and it also has the AM and FM bands.You can set the radio to be absolutely quiet until it receives a weather alert.

The instructions are very clear and an included pamphlet gives the NOAA weather frequencies for all the major cities in the USA,(which can be easily set at the bottom of the radio). There are a number of other neat features which I won't go into here. So RUN to your local Wal-Mart and see if they still have any left at this absolutely amazing price!

My only problem... The radio is made in China, but then, just about everything in Wal-Mart comes from the Orient!

I just purchased this radio locally, and I'm going to have to return it. The buttons aren't working. Considering that I've had trouble with another model weather radio from Midland, I wouldn't buy another product made by that company.

The Midland WR10 weather radio looks like a good example of industrial design gone bad. The design seems to be based on the company logo - a stylized letter "M". The problem is, assuming you're facing the "front" of the radio, all of the important controls such as the AM/FM radio tuning and volume are on the sides of the radio facing away from the user! I suppose you could operate it by feel, or position the radio backwards, but either way it still seems very awkward. Then again, if you never plan to use the WR10 as an AM/FM radio, it'll probably work just fine.

I saved myself a few dollars and ordered the similarly featured, but conventionally designed Midland 74105XL instead. Not as "pretty" but I'm sure it's identical in performance and a lot easier to use.