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This poor performance was determined under ideal conditions: radio sensitivity was set to 'distant', testing done outside and away from houses, trees, etc., new battery, clear weather and head oriented for best reception. The Sony SRF-HM10 S2 Sports Street-Style FM Radio Walkman is a well designed product except in the most important feature/function - I live in the San Francisco Metropolitan Bay Area where the FM radio spectrum is filled with stations, most of which are high powered. Any variation from these ideal conditions degraded these strong stations with even more static. Even my worn out 20 year old walkman radio doesn't have any difficulty providing clear, static free programming from most of the stations (including the weak local college stations). The Sony SRF-HM10 S2 headphone radio was not able to receive most of the Bay Area stations at all (all static) and the few strongest stations were filled with static. While I don't expect perfect reception from such a small portable radio, this performance was well below unacceptable. [.].
I tried it elsewhere -- in the car and at home, on stations that I normally get good reception, there was no joy from this model. It's worse than useless in many situations where my other three devices (all Sonys, all different, all significantly less expensive) work fine.
Reception inside the arena is usually excellent. I own 4 different FM headset radios to take to the games, so we can accommodate everyone when the whole family goes.
I bought this specifically to take to the San Jose Sharks hockey games, where we like to listen to the FM radio play-by-play as we watch, which is broadcast inside the building on a separate channel. I figured it must have weak batteries, but I always bring an extra set of brand new ones and they didn't help one bit.The problem is simple - FM radio reception is terrible.
This one was the only one I've ever tried that could not be made to give acceptable results. I was amazed at how bad it was.
Just incredibly bad. On the rare occasions when the reception is good, the sound is quite good (making it all the more frustrating).Ergonomics are also not great, it's really hard to adjust this while wearing it, and the general comfort and feel isn't good.Buy anything else but this one, this model is a real clunker.
I am very happy with it and reception is great everywhere I've used it. After reading the previous review I hesitated to purchase this radio. I agree with the previous reviewer that reception might be a conern if it is already marginal with your current radio. I liked how compact it was and the digital tuning but was worried about reception. The main radio station I listen to is nearby with a strong signal so I gambled and bought this radio. I was also worried that it might not stay secured on my head but it works very well and doesn't bother me at all while running. I have owned nearly every Sony Walkman radio and have quite a collection - this one will definately see a lot of use.
As a bicycle commuter I've been looking for quite a while for the ideal radio to use while riding. Also, I don't understand why a station scan isn't featured, but this seems to be no different than from the other S2 radios from Sony.Unlike the description the radio is for FM reception only (no AM, no Weather band, and certainly no TV band) and provides for 15 FM station presets. This becomes painfully apparent when holding the hand close to the receiver when tuned in to a weak radio station.
The sound insulation the e2c earbuds provide is simply unmatched by anything else I've seen elsewhere, including the HM10's earbuds, which unfortunately just don't go deep enough to make a tight seal.But the biggest disappointment of the HM10 is its radio reception that is probably the worst in the line of Sony's S2 sports radios. Channel preset up-down buttons that double as tuning controls, volume up-down buttons, bass boost and power button with Local and DX setting are fairly easy to learn and discern, since when wearing the radio all controls are behind your head. Seeing Sony's SRF-HM10 recently in the store had me hoping I'd found it, but it turns out I was disappointed again.My current - and so far - best solution is Sony's SRF-M85V radio with Shure's e2c earbuds.
This alone improves radio reception, so your hand acts as the antenna.Other than that, the controls are fairly straightforward. In most pocket radios the headphone cord doubles as the FM antenna and so I thought that the HM10 must have a more advanced antenna system and/or radio receiver to make up for the lack of a long headphone cord. But this is not the case.
Wearing the radio seems comfortable, although I didn't try for long periods of time or in a high impact sports activity. A nice detail is that if you program fewer than 15 stations into the radio you don't have to cycle through all the unused slots when going from your last to your first station preset.If it wasn't for the unacceptable reception capabilities and haphazard earbuds, that don't really seal very well, this would be a killer product.So, unless you only want to listen to the strongest stations in your area, don't waste your money.
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