"T. Early" wrote:

It's been a couple of weeks now since several people scored these
radios at a cheap price. I'm surprised more haven't shown up on eBay,
although a couple have. This guy:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tegory=15 051

actually bought a couple from someone else for about $290 and is now
trying to resell at least

For others who bought them, what's your impression? While I love what
they did in terms of miniaturization, I have to say I'm not knocked
out by the performance. It's decent, but I don't think it's two bills
(retail) better than a 7600GR.



I bought one of the SW07's.

The basic radio will fit the breast pocket of my car coat, and
it would fit the side pockets of a suit jacket, but I don't think Carson
would approve of the resulting radio bulge.

If you want to do more than casual listening to the major broadcasters, it's not as small as you might think because you'll want to take along the external loop antenna, and it's roughly twice as big as the radio itself.

The AC adapter is also larger than the radio.

Keeping the minimum system pocket sized resulted in compromises.

As others have noted, the speaker doesn't sound bad when you consider how small it is. It sounds nice if I feed it into my Tivoli Pal - but with it the ultra portable is becoming larger than some small tabletops.

It doesn't have a signal strength meter - presumably they could have put one on the LCD display.

The factory filters don't seem bad, but I'd rather have a choice.

The limited real estate for controls means you aren't likely to reach over and casually make changes - you need to look.

So it scores well as a gee whiz gadget, and performance seems pretty good with the Loop antenna, but if I was looking for something smaller than my 7030 system (about the size of a 5" attaché case with the custom cabinet that holds it's battery packs,
charger and the avantek preamp) I'd go for a Lowe HF-150 or a Palstar before I'd pay retail for this.

I'll probably use my sw07 for carry on because the 7030 system seems to be a little too interesting to the security folks at the airport. But I'll still be bringing the 7030 system on camping trips and most vacations -
even if it means shipping it ahead of time.

Regards,

Mark