Kaito KA1102 - Worldband radio.

I've been a radio enthusiast, and Amateur Radio Operator for 30 years. I've had many radios come and go, but the KA1102 is one that stays. This radio is an amazing bargain, and amazing performer, all in a very small package. Whenever I want to take a portable world band radio on the go with me, this is the one that comes. Whether it be for listening to World Band Broadcasts, or Ham Radio on SSB, the KA1102 performs like a radio that costs 2-3 times as much. Highly recommended.

As you can see, most SWLers rate this radio pretty high!
It's a good radio at a great price.
I think so mush of this radio, I bought two(2), silver and black.
There are better radios, but not for the price.
I like its size, sound, sensitivity, and selectivity.
It works well and its rechargable batteries charge inside the radio. (on or off)
The radio is ssb capable but a little hard to tune in.
If you want small, look at the G6. If you want more bands and perhaps a better radio design, checkout the G3 at about twice the cost and no batteries.
The KA1102 is and excellent radio for the money!

I had high expectations after reading all the great reviews of this radio. But honestly it did not live up to those expectations or even come close to an acceptable level of performance. Needless to say I returned this radio after having it only 2 days. Yes its that bad. I buy tons of stuff on Amazon. This is only the second thing I have ever returned, so I don't right this negatively review lightly.

First of all, I am not a radio junkie as it appears many of the reviewers are on here. I like listening to AM talk radio, and I was looking for a portable battery operated radio that could double as an emergency radio, picking up shortwave as well, should a power outage, natural disaster, etc occur. So my needs are minimal. But there are some glaring problems with this radio that cannot be overlooked.

1) Usability. This radio's user interface is horrible. I am very tech savvy, I rarely need to look at a manual to use electronics. Well let me tell you, this radio's user manual doesn't help matters at all. I actually had to search online to figure out how to use this thing. That brings me to problem number 2.

2) Battery charging is not an automatic process contrary to what is stated in the item description. You actually have to turn on charging manually and program the number of hours you want the batteries to charge based on what type of AA rechargeable batteries you have. The manual doesn't explain this, I had to research this online. As if that's not bad enough, you can't listen to the radio and charge the batteries at the same time. But wait it gets worse..

3) The Shortwave reception, one of the main reasons I bought this, is non-existent from what I can tell. This could be a geographic thing as I live near the coast (don't know if that makes a difference). I don't have another SW radio to compare it to, I could have gotten a dud radio. Who knows. In any case, I could not pick up one station on SW. As far as AM/FM reception goes, it was adequate, no better or worse than my car radio or my home audio receiver.

4) Perhaps a prize for most annoying feature ever should go to this radio for the sleep function. Every time you turn on the radio, it automatically enters sleep mode and will shut off after 99 minutes. So anytime you turn this radio on, you must quickly remember to shut off the sleep function (you have like .5 seconds to do this, otherwise you have to turn the radio off and back on and disable the sleep function.)

So with all that said, if you can live with the above issues, then this radio might be ok for you. But obviously, to someone like myself who doesn't worship Kaito radios, or get paid to write glowing reviews for them this radio sucks.

This radio probably deserves 3 stars, because AM/FM reception is adequate. But I am giving it 1 star to try to counterbalance the ridiculous, undeserved praise this radio has received.

This is a nice little world radio, but it is not perfect. Sound quality on AM/SW is pretty poor. Sound quality on FM is fine. I get a motorboating sound on 800 khz when the backlight comes on and on 790 khz when it is off. This is very annoying. I have only used it on AM and it seems pretty sensitive, but not very selective close to local channels. Battery life is only about 4 hours, but I guess that is acceptable. Despite its problems, I really like this little receiver and think it is worth the price.

I received the Kaito KA1102 a couple of weeks ago, and although it seems to be very well made and easy to use, I am a little disappointed. It may be that my expectations were too high. I bought the radio primarily to use the AM and shortwave bands. I like to listen to sports events at night as I am relaxing in bed and I was hoping to be able to pull in some AM stations from outside of my area (I live in the Detroit area and sometimes the local stations don't carry national games). However I have not had much success in doing that. I was also hoping to listen to some shortwave stations. I have never had a radio that receives shortwave so I don't have any experience with that. However so far I have not been able to pull in any English speaking stations clearly enough even with the supplied external antenna connected and strung outside a window. Maybe I'm just in a bad location. Based on my experience, if you are considering buying this radio in hopes of getting great AM reception and a variety of shortwave stations, you may want to look at another radio.