4Patriots Liberty Band Emergency Solar Radio: NOAA Weather Radio with Solar Panel & Power Bank

SIMPLE AND EFFECTIVE!

UPDATE, this little emergency radio alarmed like crazy about 2 months ago and would not come back on. I tried for several days. I'm so glad I fought the urge to take it apart. LOL. I put it back in the window and in a week took it out and tried again. It still wouldn't come on. I put it on a shelf and left it a few more days. Tried it again and it is working as it should with no problem what so ever. Whatever made the alarm go off originally must have ran it totally dead. It is perfect now and I may purchase one for my daughter too.

Haven’t tested it with them sending anything on solar flares. Auto pilot works thought even if it’s a little fuzzy where I am, it will still send the warning signal during a storm. It would be nice to charge my battery packs if I knew there could be a potential power outage from solar flares also. Wanted radio entertainment during camping fun and the flashlight is a nice feature.

First off, I have to agree with a couple of other guys... it's disappointing to see an item advertised as "for patriots" which is, in fact, manufactured in China. I understand the issues which cause companies to choose to do this, but for a company which claims to be "America-centric," it really needs to find some of those few remaining American manufacturers to make the parts, and assemble the product, instead. I think they'd find that the customers they're focused on would be willing to pay a bit more to get a truly "American made" product. This said... what is this, really? It has a decent, but not spectacular, weather-band radio, a shortwave receiver (but not transmitter, of course) and AM and FM receivers as well. All of which work fine, but aren't nearly as sensitive as I think you'd want if things got "hairy" and you were trying to deal with a real disaster. I can barely get my local weather radio channel inside my home (granted, a house with foil-covered drywall which blocks a lot of signal, supposedly to "save energy"... sigh) and I live in a major metro area, where the signal is quite powerful. It has a USB-rechargeable battery... a single, replaceable lithium cell... which can also be recharged using the (tiny) solar cell, or by the hand-crank. Both of those are more than adequate to power the radio, but apart from that, probably not so much. It comes with a flashlight, also powered from that lithium cell, and that works well enough, in the same sense that any old "hand cranked flashlight" does. So, use the flashlight and the radio, and the combination of the crank and the solar cell will let you do so indefinitely, if only in short periods of use. But... for some reason, someone thought this should be able to charge/power a cell phone as well. OKAY... if you're stranded in the woods with broken legs and your cell phone is dead, cranking this for a while, connecting it to your phone, and making that life-saving phone call may be VERY useful. But the single little cell in there isn't nearly sufficient to provide a full, or even partial, charge to a modern cell phone. It also has room for 3x standard AA batteries, and can run off of those instead of the lithium battery. Generally, if you were going to go out on a hike, you'd take this, with a USB cord to connect to your cell phone, fully charge it at home, and put those AA batteries in as well... and never really use it unless you got into trouble. I have several 30,000mAh battery packs with unfolding solar panel arrays, which can ALMOST keep a cell phone fully charged in normal mode, and can do so easily if you put the phone into "low power mode" (meaning minimal functionality apart from making phone calls and sending and receiving texts and similar short-data-burst communications). I'll rely on those for charging my phone if I need to. This is a fallback position, in case everything else fails. Good to have as a backup plan, but not really something I'd suggest as a "primary resource." It's not a bad device... it does what it's supposed to do. But remember, it's a "fall back position" only.

Easy to use, charges up nicely and the solar panel is perfect

Received this just before hurricane Debbie blew through South Carolina. We received 19 in of rain in 3 days. It was so good to have the weather radio to keep telling us what was coming.

Got damp, stopped working. Poor product.

The battery is too small too weak and doesn't hold a charge.