Val's Comparison of the Sony ICF-S10MK2 with the Sony ICF-S22

 

Sony ICF-S10MK2 with Sony ICF-S22
Val writes: I compared the two radio side by side. The Sony ICF-S22 is a little bit bigger with smooth tuning wheel and better sound.

AM band is very selective. I got more signal with clear null and nice sound on AM band.
FM more stable and tuning is accurate. Nice improvement from Sony.
Val

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Comments

[Angelo]

Just my opinion----the S22 is also a better looking/richer looking radio.

[StarHalo]

Stereo headphone? Swivel antenna? And it looks like the AM band still stops at 1610..

[Bill]

It looks like you could overlay the two and all controls, dial, the little tuning light, would all correspond exactly. In other words, the two radios could be exactly the same except for exterior design, the knobs used, and such. It would be interesting to see the two opened, side by side, to see how much they differ inside.

'Course even if the circuit itself was the same, upgrading a part here and there could make a huge difference.

[Bill]

I got a Sangean ATS-909x. And of course nothing would do except to get the Radio Labs modified version. This has filter modifications to improve sensitivity, supposedly.

I'm not qualified to do a detailed technical evaluation of it, but I'm very happy with it.

It is notably larger than the Tecsun PL-600 and 660, and even bigger than a Grundig G3. Especially, it is thicker. It is surprisingly heavy. Controls seem to be solid and operate very nicely. The display is very good. Sound quality is good too although on the narrow AM/MW/SW bandwith the high end of the sound is attenuated, making the radio sound muffled. It is effective in cutting down adjacent channel interference, though.

Little features are well thought out. The battery charger starts charging when you plug in the power supply with the radio turned off. A light tells you the batteries are charging and goes off when they're charged. The memories come with most of them preprogrammed with popular shortwave frequencies; you can delete these one at a time and replace them with your own information if you want. Automatic Tune System is available on AM, MW, and LW, but not on SW unfortunately. The scan system on shortwave works well, though.

I read in one review a complaint that the radio won't tune between preset shortwave broadcast bands. This is incorrect. If you go to one of the preset shortwave broadcast bands and scan, the radio will scan only within that band, continue to the end, jump back to the beginning of the band and do it again. However you can directly tune to any frequency between 1710 and 29,999, as is typical for digital shortwave.

I'm gonna keep the manual handy because if I don't I'm never going to figure how to set a wake-up alarm. (All the more so because I don't plan to do this often, so I'll have forgotten by the time I have to do it!) There's also something about automatically setting the radio time from the FM RDS. I don't think I'd want to do this since those few FM stations up here in The Sticks which DO have RDS are kind of random as to the time of day, or even the month and year, to which they set their station clocks. But if RDS works in your area, there is a control on the radio that would seem to be to allow you to set the clock from it automatically. I haven't found that in the manual, so I have no idea how it works.

How about the reception? Well, I wanted a SW radio that also worked well on AM and FM, so I could hear everything I wanted on just one radio. This set seems to fill the bill. Sitting here in daylight I am picking up stations all the way from the East Coast (Saginaw) to the West Coast (Traverse City) and even foreign stations far across the waters, such as exotic Milwaukee. At night, all the frequencies are full, of course. FM seems really sharp, and SW is acceptable.

Here the radio lacks a bit of sensitivity, but only a bit. I have noticed that holding the radio, listening to a weak SW station, the signal will fade away when I set the radio down and move away from it. I usually take this as a sign that the radio could use a bit more antenna, and indeed plugging in the supplied reel-up antenna solves the problem perfectly. I have had many radios which included external wire plug-in antennas. This is the only one where that antenna makes a serious difference I can hear.

Using the wire antenna makes the set just fine, and it's a small price to pay for not being deaf on the common broadcast bands. For that matter, shortwave reception with the whip alone is fine for any program listening grade signal. I think an external wire antenna would be more useful for DXing than for program listening. But isn't that usually the case?

The radio is kind of spendy, but I'm really enjoying it.

[Angelo]

Bill: You should send a photo of that radio in its new home environment. Great review by the way.

[Angelo]

Another one from Sony---affordable and newer model:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SONY-NEW-ICF-F10-Two-2-Band-AM-FM-Battery-Radio-100-Authentic-SafePacking-/271303402867?&_trksid=p2056016.l4276

[Gary]

Is it any different from the ICF-F10 that was discussed here some time ago, and is available cheaper on Amazon?

[val]

By performance Sony ICF-S22 has improvement on hi and low frequency. I got 670, 710 am and 1340 1430 am. I able to get this frequencu only with DSP or my superior receivers. I can't get this frequency with my S10MK2. And Fm much stable than S10MK2.
Amazon sale Sony ICF-S22 .

[Drive-In-Freak]

I'll bet ya dollars to doughnuts the differences are do to alignment.

StarHalo,
Mono jack(one connector/left), the antenna isn't swivel, but on a side mounted pin, and mine stops at 1640.

[Tom Welch]

On the Amazon UK site, the Sony ICF-S22 has a reputation for running forever on 2 AA batteries