Roberts GEMINI RD49 -

I bought the RD49 because it is small enough (just) to be regarded as 'portable' and uses normal AA batteries, meaning there is no means to carry a special charger (with which the RD49 is supplierd) if going away for a few days.

For a radio of this size, the sound quality is good and the volume control is smooth and easy to use. That's the end of the good news. Unfortunately the battery life is poor. Very poor. Loaded with 6 high capacity rechargable AA batteries, it was dead within three hours. Worse still, use the inbuilt battery charger to recharge the batteries, and it is dead within an hour. High capacity alkaline batteries didn't fare much better - three hours at most. This really undermines the portablity: no point having a portable battery if you have to keep it almost permanently attached to the mains.

Another problem is the switch for changing between rechargable batteries and non-rechargable alkaline ones. This is a tiny micro-switch in the battery comparment. It's quite fiddly to change, very stiff and feels rather flimsy.

Final grumble is the FM auto-tuner, which only picks out stations with quite a strong signal, so you have to resort to manual tuning more often than with other sets. With only 10 presets (5 for DAB, 5 for FM), this is a serious deficiency if you are somewhat of a station hopper. Reception on both frequency ranges though is good in comparison with other sets.