Sangean PR-D14 AM/FM-RDS Portable Radio with USB MP3 / WMA Playback

Very understated. An amazing radio with clear sound. Useful features such as USB.

Sangean makes great radios. I bought one of these, then another. Best reception, most useable features, and reasonably priced. On this one, as on other Sangean radios, there are no lights that stay on whether you want them to or not, so it doesn't suck energy or distract me at night. The FM reception is way above average for a 60- or 70-dollar radio: it pulls in the stations that my other brand radios can't. AM reception is also very good from what I can tell. We only get two stations where I live, and they're both pretty far away. It gets those just fine. I also have the clock radio and the emergency radio, and they have the same quality and though some of the features are different from this one, they're just as sensible. Sound quality is better than you'd expect from a small, single speaker radio, and loud enough to hear easily from the next room

We own two Sangean PRD-14's and are very happy with them. Both provide excellent reception and great sound quality. This DSP chip based radio is able to receive almost any station broadcasting in the area where there we have a crowded radio dial. Best radio we've owned in this regard, including those in our auto's and Home Entertainment System receivers. Radio function user interface (UI) is intuitive and easy to use. While MP3 UI is basic, as others have noted, it is a wonderful piece of added functionality that adds to the value of this unit. With the stereo headphone output we've combined one of these with a wired 2.1 (2 speakers and subwoofer) powered stereo speaker system to create a very good room stereo player that can play most of our music library from a single USB flash drive in addition to the radio. This radio also works well with a set of hi quality wired studio headphones. Overall the PRD-14 represents amazing value for the money. See the Radiojayallen.com reviews are consistent with our experience for more information. The reason for taking this down from a five to four star rating is that we have occasionally experienced the same problem as Steve N. on both PR-D14's where they become stuck on with no ability to change source or turn off. This problem appears to occur when buttons for non-USB playback functions are accidentally pushed while an MP3 is playing such as the radio scan or tuning button. Have found that we need to ensure we stop MP3 playback and change the source back to AM of FM radio before hitting buttons for other functions to avoid this. Clearly a software design flaw. When this happens we need to remove the power cord and batteries for about 10 minutes to allow the radio to reset for before we could use it again. Then have to reset the clock, radio presets, etc. Once we figured out what was causing the software to freeze we've generally been able to avoid the problem. Hope this information will help others PRD-14 owners.

Sangean make great radios and the radio portion of this device is up to the usual high standard. The PR-D14 has the added bonus that it has a USB port from which you can play MP3 and WMA music files loaded onto a USB stick. This function works nicely. I have a USB stick loaded with ~200 songs contained in several different folders. When USB is selected as Source, the radio plays through the songs sequentially, folder by folder. (The first read after inserting a new stick is a bit slow, but after that it it fine). The radio also offers a USB file random-play function which I haven't tried yet. The radio displays the folder in which the currently-playing music file is located. I tend to use just the USB function, with the radio plugged into to mains outlet. So, with USB selected as Source, I press the Play button when entering the room and press the same Play/Pause button when exiting the room - this supports seamless play of songs from the stick. The sound quality is what you would expect from a radio with a single speaker - it's good, but this is not super high fidelity. My USB stick is packed with songs thatI used to listen to on the radio 20-30 years ago and the Sangean reproduces that experience nicely for the intended nostalgic result. I recommend this product.

Excellent FM reception & selectivity (you can pick out weaker stations next to strong ones). AM is good but if you need excellent get the PR-D15 which has a larger am antenna. Good sound quality from speaker, and the buttons have a nice quality feel to them. I returned the first unit due to a defective speaker, but this second unit works perfectly

Initially I rated this 1 star because like another reviewer here, the USB would NOT play my MP3'S. However, I subsequently discovered the bug that I believe causes this and have contacted the manufacturer (and they have confirmed this problem). More info below - I was able to get mp3's to play, but note that there are still a number of other issues and quirks detailed below. First, let's cover the positives of this unit: Positives: (1) This thing can play mp3's - sometimes anyway - there are definitely issues (see negatives below) (2) It sounds pretty good for the type of unit it is (not "tiny" sounding - packs a decent "punch") (3) It does NOT have a "cheap" feel or look - it has a "quality" feel (4) The radio seems to be pretty good with decent reception (5) The sleep timer works well (6) The alarm works well (7) It runs off the electricity OR you can use it as a portable unit via 4 "D" batteries (battery life is VERY impressive!) Negatives: Most of the negatives center around the USB and there are a boatload of them... (1) The bug that prevented my mp3's from playing is that this unit cannot handle any mp3 file that is over 65MB or so in file size and will refuse to even read the flash drive if even 1 file on the drive is over 65MB. Most standard individual songs are much less than this of course. But, audio books, messages, and CD's that have been burned to 1 mp3 (which for some types of CD's like relaxation ones can be good), etc. will likely hit this limitation. That means if you want to use this player to listen say to an audio book or a message or any other type of longer file (which is what I wanted it for when going to sleep to play messages and so forth), you may well hit this limit. (2) If you have a flash drive that has a large amount of mp3's on it, it might take the unit 4 or 5 minutes to start playing again after the unit has been off, or it might not play at all unless you cycle through the sources numerous times. Eventually it will probably play, but if you're like me, you will get very frustrated very quickly. (3) After the unit is turned off when in USB mode, when turned back on, while it says USB mode, the player often won't read the flash drive unless you cycle through the sources to get back to USB again. This may be related to #2 above. What it should do is not start playing right away, but when you press Play it should then read the USB and play. (4) This thing sometimes likes to skip the first several seconds of a song - especially when the mp3 is larger (i.e. >10MB). I've noticed no definite pattern but have observed that this seems more common with some of my flash drives than others, but doesn't seem to be based on how fast the drive is as one of my faster USB 2.0 drives exhibits this. (5) Unfortunately, this unit plays by "written order" rather than by alphabetical. So, for example, it doesn't care if you've got 2 folders on it that say "1FolderA" and "2FolderB" - if "2FolderB" is written to the flash drive first, it will play first. This is not the first mp3 device with this problem, but I just don't understand why all these years later after mp3 hit the scene do we still have players being released that don't go alphabetically. This is especially problematic because when you copy and paste files to a flash drive using Windows Explorer, Explorer has a longtime bug (still in Windows 7) where it FREQUENTLY copies out of order (i.e. it will copy the last folder you selected first etc.). I know their are 3rd-party solutions to the "out of order copying" problem (I use one) but I shouldn't have to.. (6) I must offer this warning: I noted with one of my flash drives that it always seemed to be "electrically charged" after being plugged into this unit and would produce a "shock" when plugged back in to my computer. I must have tried it a dozen times and it did it every single time. I have a sneaky suspicion, but cannot prove, that this unit is improperly powering the USB and is pumping too much power to its USB port. If so, this could conceivably cause very serious problems down the road (i.e. including theoretically ruining a flash drive) so I personally would not use any USB drive with this that has any other important non-music data on it, just in case... (7) There's a limit of 200 folders or 9999 files that you can use on the flash drive: So if you're thinking you're going to plop a 32GB flash drive in this sucker with your entire 400 album collection on it (each album in its own folder), think again... This isn't the first mp3 player with these types of limits. But I don't understand why we're in 2012 and players are being released with limits like these, especially the folder one. Most people don't have 10,000 mp3's but 200 folders is not that uncommon these days. (8) The physical USB slot itself is on the top and rather than being in the center of the place allotted for it, it is flush with one of the sides. This means that USB drives that are fatter I'm wondering if they may not fit and really small ones you may get in but have trouble trying to remove. For the record, I have a tiny 32GB Sandisk Cruzer Fit drive that seems to fit OK and is "doable" but it's not the easiest thing to remove. I don't really care for the USB being on top of the unit, but I haven't come up with a better option so... (9) I wish one of its "play mode" options was just to play the current song and then stop. For me, I like to listen to a specific file (a relaxation type of CD that's all in one mp3) that I go to sleep to and I use the sleep timer. I don't want the player to go to the next track when it ends, but rather just end. Instead I have to set it to repeat the track, which is ok, but I would rather it offered the ability to just "play once and then stop playing" like my other mp3 player does. Final Analysis: All things considered, this product shows GREAT promise and might be worthwhile for some, but Sangean needs to fix their USB issues. Releasing a product that's centerpiece feature is mp3 playing via USB that has such major USB bugs is really not acceptable and they need to remedy this. If they could address the negatives above, I'd say they could easily have a 5-star product (that is very much needed in the marketplace!) Note: I originally rated this 1 star, then upped it to 4 after "working around" the 65MB bug, but after using the unit for a while, have bumped it down to 3 stars due to the major annoyance of the other USB problems. Update 8/2014: The bottom-line skinny on this player is if you will limit yourself to like 40 or 50 folders of mp3's - maybe 200-300 mp3's total, make sure that none of those mp3's are over 65MB, and don't intend to be changing those mp3's often (which would be a real pain due to the "playing by written order" problem), this unit isn't bad. Limiting the number of mp3's & folders on the flash drive seems to help a lot.

Small but mighty! It's amazing how good this one speaker radio can sound. The reception is quite good. That's a big job in central Florida thanks to too many radio stations jammed together. Thee's no tone control but it's tone is pretty good anyway. It does a good job of playing music on usb sticks which was the main reason I bought it. I would highly recommend it..

Bought this for my hubby......he loves it..........reception is awesome for his AM "talk channels." Nice size - better than the "boom box" he was using before!!! It's now been over a year that my husband has had this radio. All of a sudden he can no longer turn the radio on........something about the on/off button........very disappointing........didn't expect this to happen in such short of time; especially since he doesn't turn it on everyday. So not feeling comfortable to recommend this radio.

Not too slim, not too fat. Good volume for a 3bhk. Signal reception is not very great but acceptable. Antenna can be rotated 360d. Batteries lost long. Only 5 stations to store. Supports am/FM. Didn't explore Other connectivity. Overall am pretty satisfied. Great build quality and design.

This is a perfect radio for my mancave. It has good sound qualities and being digital it's easy to chance stations when necessary. I expect battery life to be good with four "D" cell batteries, but time will tell. Overall I'm very happy with this radio. (I own 3 other Sangean radios)

I was interested in having a battery operated radio with a usb port so I could listen to podcasts while in my remote cabin. It perfectly met my needs. It's my second Sangean radio. I have one in the kitchen. High quality, both.