The basic S350 has been discontinued. The improved model is the
S350DL and the list price on it was reduced to $100 from the former
$150 early this year. However, the large headphones that came with this
radio
were discontinued as part of the price reduction, but this was not done
well --
the first of the reduced-price S350DLs came in boxes that bore legends
stating that the headphones WERE included, but they were simply left
out of the boxes. There was still a space in the packing material where
the
headphones used to be stowed. (I understand that there were also some
smaller boxes with no space for the headphones but the box printing
also
said that the headphones were inside.)

Some vendors also advertised the S350DLs at the $100 price and stated
in their catalog descriptions that the headphones were included. This
caused confusion and ill-will between customers and vendors and the
incidents have not been resolved as of yet.

The radio itself has its good and bad points. It does have
reasonably-good
audio quality. The S350DL has modified tuning circuitry that largely
eliminates the shortwave drift that plagued the earlier S350. However,
a
side effect of this is that the tuning of an exact 0 or 5 kHz channel
is a bit
"sticky" -- the radio will lock on a frequency a kHz or two off and
make it hard
to tweak the tuning to the correct exact frequency. Once it IS tuned
correctly, it doesn't drift off that.

Tuning using the knob is a bit clunky. The knob seems a bit rough and
the concentric coarse/fine tuning isn't very smooth. SW sensitivity is
reasonable but not as good as many other radios (which mostly
admittedly
cost more, except for the Kaito/Degen models). It still is just a
single-
conversion receiver, which means that there are images 900 kHz away
from the correct frequency.

AM MW reception is OK, but this isn't a GE SuperRadio with a digital
display. It is better than most ordinary AM radios.

FM reception was disappointing to me. It *will* receive local weak FM
signals but it is *very* dependent on the radio's position (whether it
was
sitting upright or laying on its back, and what direction it was
turned) and
whether the whip antenna was unfolded and set to come out the side of
the
radio horizontally or not, and again what direction the radio is
turned. Things
change if you are holding the radio or if it is sat down away from you.
This
means that you *can* get the stations you want, usually, but you can't
just
sit the radio on a table, tune the frequency, and leave it alone at
that. You
have to fiddle with it for each different weak station. (Strong
stations come
in OK without fiddling, but that's no big deal.)

Hope this helps!

Will Martin