First Look: The Crosley Solo Radio

I tinkered around a bit with the Crosely Solo AM/FM Radio at Target. The store was selling it for $59.95, far less than its $129 asking price on Amazon. The interface was easy to use and read. The arrows on the tuning dial pointed directly at the stations. Also, the Solo has a telescopic antenna, which I always favor over the pigtail wire antenna that radio companies insist on putting on their otherwise good radios: Sangean WR-2, Tivoli Model One, Boston Acoustics Recepter and Horizon Solo. I beg all you companies to put a telescopic antenna on those radios and charge me an extra $15. I'll buy them.

Back to the Solo: The FM sensitivity, even inside the store, was well above average. The Solo confidently "grabbed" two weak stations, 89.3 and the even weaker 88.9.  The AM seemed weaker and an Amazon review attested to this also. However, I want to reserve judgment on AM since the environment at Target had to be high-interference.

Speaker sound was above average but not as good as the Tivoli Model One. If the AM proves solid (which I doubt), then this is a great buy for $59. But with bad AM no price is too cheap.

Curios Observation: Is the Crosely Solo a rebadged $139 Tangent Uno?

Comments

[Mike W]

"But with bad AM no price is too cheap. "

Amen to that, especially given the fact that AM radio is a simple, century-old technology and designing a good, affordable AM receiver isn't exactly nanotechnology at this point.

I am not interested in the Crosley Solo, but I could not help noticing that the Crosley Explorer is priced at $150 on the company site :

http://www.crosleyradio.com/prods/crxm.html

At that price it might even be worth foregoing satellite radio capability and just using it as an AM/FM. It needs extra gadgetry to receive XM, a point which seems to have confused some buyers.

I took a pass on it because I can't get XM access in my current apartment, suspect it may need a fancy outboard antenna to work well on AM, and am waiting on the Satellit 750 in June, but the Explorer does at least look interesting.

I don't get to the "box stores" much any more, but when I do I always play with the gadgets a little, especially radios, but like you I never really trust the in-store performance, it's a poor indication of how good or bad a radio is.

[Cyril]

This looks a lot like the Tangent Uno (with a square speaker grid): http://www.tangent-audio.com/00003/00011/00036/
Tangent is a Danish company which sells through C.Crane in the US (for a lot more than the Crosley radio)

[Jeff McMahon]

Mike, you're right. I shouldn't do any store impressions. Interference is horrible.

Cyril, man they look like the same radio. I should do a post.

[Wals]

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_e?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=crosley+CR02002AWA
Today's Target ad features two Crosley digitals @ $88. Both dock iPods which is where all tec seems to be going in clock radios.

[Jeff McMahon]

Wals,

Thanks for the link. I wonder who Crosely is using for their radios. The Tangent Uno looks just like the Solo. Most of these iPod radios have lousy tuners though Ed Strnad praises the Boston Acoustics Horizon Duo.