|
Product Reviews
Why am I the Power Manager?, October 5, 2004
Reviewer: John James
I must confess this was a bit of an impulse buy. I already
owned theDC911 radio/charger, but had been driven crazy by
the knob tuning, and really liked the idea of being able
to keep my MP3 player with the unit.
When using the DC911, it's always been nice to just grab
the radio, walk wherever you're going to work, and carry
your music with you. There are plenty of times I know I
don't need to recharge a battery, but just want to listen
to my tunes while I work. The DC911 gave this to me, and
would run seemingly forever before needing another charge.
When I plugged it in, the battery charge was fast.
A worker friend had won the Milwaukee version of this
product. The digital tuning was great. The presets were
very convenient. The fact the Milwaukee product is not
also a charger is brain dead. I looked forward to DeWalt
catching up with the digital features, though. When the
DC011 showed up, I gladly took the plunge.
What I have discovered after a month of use is that this
radio is nothing short of frustrating from a feature
standpoint. The digital tuning is convenient, but the
presets have proven to be useless. Why? Because they are
far too volatile. As another reviewer pointed out, the
unit will exhaust a freshly charged DeWalt battery in 50
hours or less. What that means is that your radio will be
dead if you leave it in your truck over Labor Day weekend,
or even Monday morning if you were to unplug it early on
Friday. To counter this, you find yourself consciously
thinking about taking the NiCad battery out of the radio
every time you put it away in your truck. Oh, but that it
were that simple! After a week of doing just that, I found
that the two AA batteries were now dead, safely taking my
presets with them! I performed this test twice, not quite
believing the first set of results. The silly thing is
that the only thing the batteries are really trying to do
while the unit is both turned off and unplugged is save
the presets (why aren't they in a small chip of NVRAM?)
and display the digital clock. Why that burns through a
set of AA batteries in a week is beyond me.
What I find I have done is move from a nice unit (the
DC911) that can be characterized as a portable radio that
just happens to be a battery charger over to a frustrating
unit (the DC011) that is a battery charger that just
happens to be a radio. If you leave the unit plugged in at
all - and I mean ALL - times, you have good functionality.
If you unplug the unit for a short time, you have adequate
functionality. If you unplug the unit for a weekend,
you're going to be quite disappointed when you return to
it on Monday.
My best recourse at this time is to just remove the AA
batteries, forget the presets, totally ignore the clock
(which most couldn't care less about, anyway), tune it
manually when in use, and take the battery out of the unit
when I turn it off and put it in the truck. I am now
playing the role of power management for a product that
has less power management complexities than laptops that
have been managing this problem effectively for over a
decade. Sadly, I expected better engineering from DeWalt
than this.
________________________________________________________________________
Dewalt, what were you thinking?!, October 18, 2004
Reviewer: John McQuitty
Dewalt, what were you thinking? This thing is way to
expensive for a portable radio, and it's way too expensive
for a charger, but maybe for the convenience of both
together...... However it is severely limited as a
portable radio. The batteries run down over the weekend
when the thing is turned OFF. It's no good on a job site -
at least not for very long. I'll put it in the shop and
use it for a VERY expensive plug-in radio, but I have no
Dewalt products in the shop so the charger is useless.
Dewalt, I expected better from you. Don't get very far
from your extension cord with this thing. Not recommended!
_________________________________________________________________________
Three down-None to go! , December 18, 2005
Reviewer: SRUN (Mpls, MN USA) - See all my reviews
Started out with the DC911, speakers blew inside of nine
monthes, (illusion of poor reception perhaps?). Bought the
DC011 and it drained batteries (14 & 18 volt) OVER NIGHT,
consistantly. Took it back for another try. Second DC011,
six weeks in, not one push button would work. Battery
charger worked OK though. Guess where that one is! Back
where I bought it! I won't try again until they can
guarantee it.
_________________________________________________________________________
DeWalt DC011 Radio / Charger, September 30, 2005
Reviewer: Jeffrey Bogue
Best worksite radio / chargeing system purchased to date,
works great. Would like to see that the display had an
option to stay lit all the time for evening or night time
work, hard to see display ounce light goes out.
__________________________________________________________________________
Product works OK. Not the best radio on the market., July
21, 2005
Reviewer: Mr. David A. Youngblood
Seems to be over priced for the sound quality it produces.
I enjoy using it on my jobsite, however, you will not be
overwhelmed by exceptional bass or other sound quality.
Would be nice if it had automatic station scanning versus
manual knob scanning capability. For the price you would
expect a CD player to be included since they are very
inexpensive. The ability to charge a battery while playing
the radio is priceless.
__________________________________________________________________________
DeWalt Missed the Boat on this one, February 23, 2005
Reviewer: E. M. Shafer, II "mshafe01"
I have the first version of the DeWalt Radio and won't
think about purchasing another one until DeWalt improves
the battery drain issue, reception is horrible and drifts,
should have a built in MP3 capable CD-R/DVD-R/DVD+R
player. The aux input is a stupid idea. The Bosch unit is
much closer to ideal, but all my cordless stuff is
DeWalt......I hope DeWalt design teams read this and take
it to heart......Do not purchase this unit!__________________________________________________________________________ |
