A Feature-Packed Radio at a Great Price

I wanted a small shortwave radio to take on a trip. Whenever I travel, I feel bad because my Sangean ATS-909 is a little too big to drag along. Besides size, cost was an important factor in my purchase decision. There were not many reviews for the Kaito KA11, but it had most of the features I wanted and overall Kaito radios have pretty good reviews.

I ordered the radio online for $54 including shipping. As advertised, the radio is extremely small. Although small in size, this radio is packed with features. Overall, the buttons/controls are nicely laid out. Using the radio is very intuitive, but you may need to crack open the manual to use some of the features such as the sleep timer and the alarm clock. The manual is easy to read, but obviously translated to English so some of the sentences require some patience to understand.

Features: The radio has 1000 memory locations (100 per page). You have the option to scan through the stored memory locations or just scan up/down by frequency. Even though the speaker is small, the radio still sounds good. Overall, sensitivity is decent and selectivity between strong adjacent stations is good. The radio displays both time and frequency. The backlight is orange and the LCD display is very easy to read. So far battery life seems very good. The left-side of the radio has an external antenna jack. The battery compartment door is attached...a welcome change. The package comes with an AC adapter, manual, ear bud headphones and a long-wire external antenna. If you use rechargeable batteries, it is possible to charge the batteries inside the radio (with the AC adapter).

The whip antenna stores inside the radio. I am not sure I like this feature. Sometimes the antenna sticks while trying to push it back into the radio. Hopefully this will become less sticky over time. To set the clock, you need need to take the batteries out of the radio momentarily. The rotary volume control is very sensitive. Unfortunately, this makes it fairly easy to go from low volume to extremely loud without much movement. I also do not care for the location of the volume control. When the radio is lying flat on a table, you cannot adjust the volume. The carrying strap is permanently attached to the radio. This is a small annoyance. Unlike similar radios in its class, there is no pop-out stand. In my opinion, the frequency coverage should have included the 60 meter band.

For future designs of this radio, I would like to see a slight change in memory functionality. If you manually punch in a frequency that is already in memory, I would like the behavior changed so it displays the memory location of that frequency. Right now, you have no way to know if a frequency is already in memory. There should also be an easy way to add a frequency to the next available memory location. Currently, you need to specify a memory location when saving a frequency. This increases the possibility that you may overwrite a memory location with a different frequency.

In summary, I really love my Kaito KA11 radio and I am very happy with the purchase. It is definitely a great feature-packed radio, especially for its size and price. Most of the issues discussed above are minor annoyances and definitely not reasons to avoid this radio.