SPARC HD Radio SHD-P360 Pocket Size Portable Radio with FM & HD Radio Tuners and Built-in Speaker

No offense to the other reviewers but I'll try to write a more informative review for this radio.First the obligatory(for a radio) reception statement. I live in NY/Queens/Long Island area and the reception is as good as I could have expected. Gets all the stations I wanted. There are two extra rock stations, two extra sports stations on HD and the two AM news stations are simulcast on HD. Excellent reception outside and even steady HD down in a basement for the stronger stations. The weakest HD stations work outside but won't link in a basement setting. Solid reception overall in my area.Build quality is solid. Clean finish-wise and mostly made of plastic. Light weight but not really cheap. Neither is it very sturdily built though. In between but no creakiness or flex in the body. Could be thicker plastics but I have seen thinner. Battery compartment is a pop off, snap on deal. Would have liked maybe a slide in/out one better. Houses the popular BL-5C battery rated at 1000mah for cheap and available replacements. There are lower capacity 750, 900 etc. so a 1000mah version is good to see over the cheapest one. Buttons and jog dial on the side are solid and register input accurately. Antenna is thin but a decent one. It extends straight out and also articulates which is more than most cheaper portable radios that just pull in and out but can't be "aimed". Design is good but could be better. Mentioned the battery door design choice is not the easiest to work with. USB cable is proprietary connector and the cable is short. Screen is good but not LCD which means harder to read in sunlight by getting washed out. The radio has dedicated volume buttons but they are 2 and 3 in a row of four buttons. A bit more getting used to pocket use since the volume buttons are not on their own but in between others. A hold switch is on the side and is a bit small. Nothing that is a deal breaker but a few things could be more convenient.Use of the device is straight forward but, again, some things could be easier. Two seconds button press powers on and off. Some jog dials tune up and down or preset up and down depending on what you choose; press and you scan presets, press in again and tune by steps manually. This radio always tunes by step and you press to enter presets then scroll through and select. Would be easier to just press up and down to change the presets. Unused presets are skipped, which is nice, but still pocket operation is hurt by having to select cause you can't scroll through directly by using up and down.Memory/preset setting is easy enough. Tune to the station, press memory button and scroll up or down to the desired slot and press memory again to save. nice that it shows previously set memory stations so you are not blindly filling slots. Menu button bring up options such as language, backlight(time), sleep timer, area(reception range/increments), and reset options.The radio gives station name and artist and song info or show name for sports and other formats. Enough to make a quick note if I am curious but don't need anymore as this small portable is for sports and commuting and not something like a phone that you look at all the time.Speaker is quite a good little speaker and the included earbuds are also very good sounding so they did a good job there. Earbuds have a gold plated plug and have a cord slider/chin cinch on them and also come with a pair of foams. Sound quality of the radio is quite good. No complaints there.Could have come with a small case or pouch for the price. A case with a belt clip and a longer USB cable would have been very nice additions.It could use some tweaking for ease of use but the radio more than gets the job done. I get the extra stations I wanted that are not available on standard radio and they come in well and sound good. I recommend it!

The radio worked well for one month after purchase in Oct., 2015. It has frozen three times in the last three days, requiring removal of the battery to reset. I began buying Insignia HD radios when two local FM stations began HD classical music broadcasts. The HD signal is great, the radios not so much. I went through two Insignia portables before I began getting warranties for them, and two more after that as warranty replacements. Then, when the last reliably crapped out, I discovered they were no longer available. No surprise there.I then bought the SPARC, which I had not chosen earlier, since it lacked a clip-on feature. It's slim enough that it fits in a watch pocket, so that's okay. The controls are simpler, which is good. The built-in speaker, which takes up a lot of room and is tinny, is not useful. The rechargeable battery loses one bar after an hour of use, and a second bar after another 90 minutes or so. Tolerable, but not great. They should eliminate the speaker, and focus on reliability, particularly as a $60.00 device.I would give it a solid four stars, except for the recent freeze-ups, which in the Insignia units preceded total failure, and the useless speaker.

This radio is small with a capital "S", wow it's compact and light weight, it did not even feel like anything was in the shipping box. The sound quality is really good so far, I am listening through the speaker. The instructions are not so good, so how do you insert the battery into this radio, just use you finger nail to pry up on the battery cover, it does not slide. Pry up a little on the slot at the bottom of the radio and slowly sweep your finger around the perimeter, gradually and gently prying up the cover till all clips are at the end, then just pull it off.I read all the radio reviews for most of the Radios on Amazon's site, and this one caught my eye, all the other radio's had some really negative reviews. I was not so much concerned about the price and I wanted a quality radio, so far so good. I needed a small radio at work, and this one has HD reception. So I will use it every day, hopefully it holds up.This Radio occasionally locks up and will not respond to any controls and requires removing the battery to reset it.

It works well as a portable and receives HD well. I bought it as a front end for a very good sounding table model stereo radio by Cambridge Soundworks. They later came out with an HD version, and then dropped it from their catalog. This radio was the most economical way to convert to HD. Our local station has 3 channels on one signal, so the only way to get HD-2 or 3 is to buy this as a front end.

Radio works fine if you do not plug in an external speaker into the headphone jack. For some reason when I try to plug in a small external speaker to the headphone jack, the unit loses reception. As soon as you unplug the external speaker, reception comes back. Strange. I've tried several external speakers and different audio cables to no avail. Other than that, it appears to work ok..

Perfect, absolutely great for the price... I use this professionally to test FM stations is a GREAT product..... ESPECIALLY for the price!!!

Please bring back this radio its the best potable out there have two years no problems great little hd radio.

Excellent little radio, HD)2 works great in my city (Vancouver) no need to extend antenna. Simple to operate after reading instructions carefully and paying attention.The battery meter is informative for when its time to recharge. The speaker is crystal clear for listening to a news/talk channel. I like the compact size, just a little bigger than a Zippo lighter.