Eton Grundig S450DLX Deluxe AM / FM / Shortwave Radio - Black, NGS450DLB

Ordered from Amazon and received my radio a few days after Christmas. As a radio enthusiast I have been in search of the perfect radio. My interests are mainly in MW dxing and have been looking for a modern radio with strong AM reception. My location is in North East PA on the outskirts of a small city. I enjoy listening to am stations located in Philly, Chicago and NYC. Two years ago I decided to look for a new radio that would have the ability to pick up my favorite stations during the daytime. I currently own several Grunding radios, the G3, G5 and G6 that I have purchased thru Radio Shack. (As a side note I must have bought and returned those models several times until I found a hot one that performed well). I was in search of a modern radio with AM performance close to my Sony ICF-2010. I must admit that this radio is very close and has better AM reception than my Sangean 909 and Sony ICF-SW7600GR. The 2010 is still the king, but I am very happy with this radio.The FM performance is also very good, however my little Tecsun PL -310 with DSP has it beat. By the way, the 310 also has very good AM performance for it's size.The s450 is a large radio, and when loaded with six "D" cells it gets quite heavy. Included with it is power adapter that in my comparison added little to no extra noise. Overall the radios build quality is decent. The tuning nob and most other switches seems ok, with the exception of the wide, narrow and FM switch. The display lights up well and there is a switch that will also light up most of the buttons on the front panel. The radio comes set with a annoying beep when turned on, but I found that if you hold the sleep button down when the radio is off it will disable this feature. So, in summary, this radio is not perfect but for me comes very very close with terrific AM sensitivity and for the money it is a great deal.

Model: Grundig S450DLXSerial#: 20130401479Total Price Paid: $48.94Condition: Refurbished as new (display model)My mother always used to say “Don’t judge a book by its cover, it’s what’s inside that counts”. The Grundig S450DLX certainly follows this philosophy and the many reports of poor construction are true. Dubbing this as a “Field Radio” is a misnomer. The case is made of light, cheap, brittle plastic – the kind that doesn’t crack but shatter on impact. The bandwidth and band selector knobs feel loose and have a considerable amount of play. The buttons feel cheap, especially the Light and Snooze buttons on the top, which are flimsier than a $5 clock radio bought at a dollar store. The battery door (made of the same cheap plastics) is removable and two small tabs latch into the bottom before closing it. I anticipate these small tabs breaking over time since a considerable amount of force is needed to close it after batteries are installed. The tuning knob on mine is stiff and difficult to use with the finger dimple, but it doesn’t affect tuning in general. The memory system isn’t intuitive and is a bit lacking in terms of available channels, and splitting the entire shortwave band into three sections is downright archaic for a digitally tuned PLL radio. Needless to say my first impressions of the S450DLX were pretty low out of the box, but what was to come completely changed my mind.After installing the 6 D cells the radio went from feather light to something that feels more substantial. I used 4 small self-adhesive rubber feet on the bottom to keep it from sliding around on smooth surfaces. With the weight of the batteries and rubber feet the radio stays rock solid stationary with any button press or turn of a dial.After powering the radio on I was impressed with the display, the frequency digits are large and easy to read with good contrast. The backlight is cool blue and activated by using the tuning knob or “Light” button on the top of the radio. Fidelity from the large internal speaker is above average but a bit lacking in bass response on MW and SW no matter how much you adjust the tone controls. FM sounds excellent, though, and is room filling with a lot of low end throw equivalent to an expensive tabletop model. The audio amplifier is very clean with no detectable hiss at minimum volume even when using headphones. To my surprise sensitivity on MW and SW was rivaling my Tecsun PL-600 and DX-398 using just the telescopic whip and internal ferrite antenna at less than optimum band conditions late afternoon. FM performance is good but nothing to write home about, several of my smaller and cheaper portables trounce the S450DLX in this department. Selectivity is good but I’d like to have heard a tighter “narrow” setting, this one sounds like it could be 1kHz tighter without sacrificing audio quality. The “wide” setting is too wide, stations bleed all over each other when dialing through a congested band but is nice to use for full fidelity of powerhouse broadcasters.Discovering that this radio had better than average sensitivity I was hesitant trying the external antenna connections. Other than my DX-398, large antennas bring small portable receivers to their knees. Even though the S450DLX isn’t a small radio and has connections for such antennas I still had my reservations. First I connected my G5RV. This is a dipole that’s 102’ long end to end and I used no tuner or pre-selector. Typically I would expect to hear shorwave broadcasters all over the band where they shouldn’t be due to overload, but this wasn’t the case. No imaging ANYWHERE and this was with the radio switched to “DX” and the gain control wide open, I was floored and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I switched to my 56-foot end-fed longwire with 9:1 Unun, same result, no imaging or overload. I tested both antennas connected for the MW band with the same excellent results, even late at night when the bands were open. Testing FM with a discone antenna improved reception but not much better than the telescopic whip which surprised me. To surmise this radio loves long antennas on MW and SW and handles them with ease. The DX/Local switch and gain control are very effective but found I very seldom have to use them. For MW and SW listening I never expected the S450DLX to be this good, it’s in a class of its own for this purpose and it leaves other portables in the dust. This is becoming my “go to” radio when the Icom 746 Pro isn’t on.It’s a shame the S450DLX is constructed so crappy because it could easily be rated an overall 5, otherwise here’s how I rate each feature.Construction = 2.5Memory system and ergonomics = 3MW Performance = 5SW Performance = 5FM Performance = 3.5