Roberts Solar Powered DAB Radio

rogerbee05 September 2009

I bought one of these Solar radios, mainly on the recommendation of the show. It seems to work great in all respects except reception quality. The signal is continuously dropping out which makes it a bit irritating at times to listen to. The area I live in is not wonderful for DAB reception but I already have another Roberts portable that works a lot better than this one. I'm still considering whether this might be a fault of the Solar in general or whether I've just bought a lemon. It would be interesting to hear from other owners.

Charlie Harden14 September 2009

Bought mine a few weeks ago and have been very impressed with it. For me reception has been fine and have had no problems recieving the main DAB stations. Like most blokes checking the user guide is a sign of failure and I didnt realise that the arial has a pull up extension which really improves signal strength . Love the fact that its solar powered but wished they had included FM. All in all a good bit of kit and highly recommend it.

rogerbee17 September 2009

Further to my comments above, I've now got a replacement for my original Solar radio. Annoyingly, this new one is only slightly better than the first one I had. It's very variable but I still get too many little silent gaps where the radio briefly loses the signal. I've a suspicion that it's related to aeroplanes flying overhead. However, as I noted before, this doesn't happen with my other Roberts DAB portable. The people at Roberts say all their radios have pretty much the same tuner in them so if one works OK then the other should too. Very puzzling!