Sony Style Outlet Selling SRF59 Ultralight Radio for $9.99

Thanks to Ken who writes:

The Sony Style Outlet website is a good source of excellent prices on Sony radios and boomboxes. For example right now they have the Sony SRF59 for $9.99. 

This is one of the radios that pretty much kicked off the Ultralight craze several years ago. It's a fun little analog radio. I bring it along with me if I'm taking a walk around sunset and it's an amazing DXer for its price and size.

Comments

[Account Deleted]

Pretty thing. Got one for 99 RUR (about $3) a year ago on sale at MediaMarkt.
The one big disadvantage is wrong scale alignment. I aligned AM scale but not FM. My SRF-59 covers approximately 74-108 MHz on FM instead of 87.5-108 MHz.

[Tom Welch]

The Sony SRF 59 runs for 100 hours on a single AA battery.

[Michigan Radio Addict]

Picked up one of these a couple of months ago. I'd heard the raves from the ultralight crowd, and for the price, the headphones alone are worth it.

AM reception is quite good, though the dial calibration is laughable. I was disappointed with the FM reception, however. The SRF-59 lacks a dedicated FM antenna, and uses the headphone cord in lieu of that.

For me, at least, this isn't a good solution. Lots of hiss on most of the FM stations I regularly listen to. It would be helpful if the radio had the ability to switch from Stereo to Mono to clarify weak signals. Instead, there's a Local/DX switch for FM, but even on DX, I can't get decent reception.

If the FM stations you want to listen to are reliably strong, or if you only want AM, this is an excellent buy. And as I said, the headphones are good enough that even if you bought this and just threw away the radio (yes, I realize that's a mortal sin), you still wouldn't feel ripped off.