NOAA Emergency Weather Radio - Solar, Hand Crank, 5-Way Powered AM/FM/SW Portable Radio with 18500mWh Power Bank, LED Flashlight & SOS Alarm (Yellow) - Perfect for Camping, Hiking, and Emergency Preparedness

In every household in the US, there should be two types of NOAA weather radio: one like this that is portable, crank-rechargeable, and capable of also tuning into the local AM and FM bands, and one like the Midland WR-120, that you keep on a table somewhere, while it's constantly listening for the SAME headers used by the Emergency Alert System on your local NWR station. Those desktop NOAA SAME radios will automatically turn on with a loud siren to let you know when your local NWR station has issued any severe weather warnings or other emergency alerts, assuming you have programmed it right. If you live in the United States, I highly recommend buying one of those as well. A solid, user-friendly option (very easy to program) is the Midland WR-120, considered by many to be the gold standard of automatic-alerting NOAA radios.When your desktop receiver goes off and lets you know of the tornado warning, wildfire, evacuation, etc, you and your family will be quickly informed of what to do. Basically any action you take will be going somewhere safe, and that should include taking your family's emergency kit and THIS radio (the portable one you are reading a review for), where you can continue listening to the local NOAA station plus your local AM and FM outlets if needed. This dynamic duo of emergency radio listening capability is the #1 way to ensure you are informed during any major emergency, from beginning to end.The above two paragraphs are not necessarily specific to this product, but any portable NOAA radio. If I buy and review any others, I will likely copy and paste all of that to the start of those reviews as well. NOW, on to the specifics of this radio:PROS:The product is solidly built and includes a decent carrying strap with a button compass and cheap carabiner (I had to really press on it to open it the first time). The compass works. The radio itself meets all the minimum requirements one should expect from a portable emergency radio: NOAA weather band tuning, and local AM and FM tuning. It also can tune to most (7 to 19 MHz) of the shortwave band, which probably won't be useful in any local emergency, but could feasibly provide some useful information in a national one if your local stations were not also doing so for some reason. Shortwave also has a wide variety of programming, so it could provide entertainment if the situation permits some time to not have to listen for emergency information on the other bands. The built-in flashlight and reading light should suffice for their respective purposes. The entire device, radio, lights, etc all can derive power from either the 5,000 mAh lithium battery in the bottom, or three AAA cells (not included). This redundant power is very useful to have, especially if your emergency pack has some extra AAAs in it. The crank will fully charge the lithium battery in about 16 hours (per my calculation), the solar panel in about a week. During an emergency, you should have no problem keeping the radio running if you simply crank the crank for several minutes whenever you see the low battery light come on. If sun is available, keeping the device in it may slightly reduce how often you need to crank it, but definitely do not count on using the solar panel as your only source of charging. A major bonus to this radio is the USB port for charging other devices. The 5,000 mAh lithium battery will provide a few full charges to the average smartphone, which can be a very important resource in an emergency where you are forced to leave your home. The "SOS siren" is extremely loud and will no doubt be useful if you become trapped in rubble.Interesting pro: This radio does actually have a very rudimentary SAME automatic alerting function. According to the manual, if the radio is turned on and the correct weather channel is selected on the weather band selector switch, and the radio is set to the weather band mode (which means the radio should actively be playing your local NWR station out of the speaker), the device will turn on its "SOS siren" for 9 seconds and then resume playing the local NWR station. This isn't super practical since generally, you won't have this thing turned on and tuned to NWR, and furthermore it will likely be in your emergency bag. However, I could see this functionality being reasonably useful if you are already in an emergency, with the radio on and turned to the weather channel, and a new alert is issued. If you and your family are not actively listening to the radio at the time (perhaps you're covering windows or doing some other emergency activity), then the loud siren could be useful in gathering everyone around the radio to hear the latest update on the situation. Again though, this definitely should not replace your desktop NOAA radio, which CAN alert you while it's not actively playing the NWR station through its speaker.CONS:Only one that I can think of: What is likely the main reason this radio is so inexpensive despite the several neat bonuses I mentioned above is the mechanical tuning. The radio has a regular mechanical tuner with a knob, and due to the size of this device, the stroke of the tuner and the knob with which you operate it are both very small. This makes tuning difficult, and even bumping the knob can result in losing the station. However, this only applies to the FM, AM, and SW bands. The NOAA weather channel you listen to is selected by a separate knob with 7 positions. As long as you're within range of an NWR transmitter, finding your area's station should take about 3 seconds. The difficult tuning issue is only going to matter if you want to seek information or entertainment from your local AM and FM stations (or shortwave, if that's your thing).OVERALL:I gave this radio five stars for sound quality (based on FM sound), four for ease of use, and five for value for money. Five stars overall. It does exactly what it should, and then some very useful extras, for a very good price. From what I can tell so far, it should be able to physically withstand being knocked around in an evacuation kit, tornado kit, bug-out-bag, or any other pack you would put it in. You may want to leave the AAA batteries out and set the power switch to the 'AAA' mode so that you don't accidentally turn on the flashlight or "SOS siren" while the device is jostled in your emergency bag as you rush to wherever the emergency warrants.If I discover anything new, I will edit this review and add it below: