Sony ICF-36 Review

I purchased this radio at Frys electronics for about 27.00 including tax. The ICF-36 is a moderatly small portable radio, that runs off of 4 AA batteries or you may plug it directly into a ac outlet. It recieves AM-FM, tv sound of channels 2-13, and the national weather broadcast. Below I will rate the performance of the above catagories. Please keep in mind I am not a pro reviewer, and these are ONLY my perceptions of the radio. The radio has a red tuning light, which indicates when you have the station tuned to its maximum strenth. I personally like this feature. The radio has a high-low tone switch, which works nicely to obtain the tone you desire. The band selector is on the front of the radio.

AM performace is very good, It is above average in sensitivity.It has very good sound on AM. The AM tuner works very well.

FM: sensitivity is also very good, but it does not have good selectivity on the FM band. Selectivity is the ability to seperate signals. Sometimes two strong stations that are close together will "run together" and it will take a little bit of "playing" with the tuner to tune the station you are desiring to listen to, but once you get it tuned in, the sound is exellent. Frequence stability is exellent. The radio does not drift off frequency.

TV sound Channels 2-13: The radio performs very well for recieving the sound of Tv channels 2-13. The dial is very accurate. I would rate the tv sound, and tv tuner to be exellent.


Weather: The weather is located on the same band as the upper tv channels. . Inside, so far, I have not been able to hear the weather inside. I feel the radio is lacking ALOT in sensitivity in the WEATHER band. You will probably have to be outside to hear the weather on the radio, and "play" with the antenna a little, but you should be able to get the weather outside. I would highly recomend this radio for AM-FM, and TV sound reception of channels 2-13.

But IF your MAIN interest is listening to the WEATHER, in my opinion,far better options exist for listening to the weather. (I own several scanner radios, and they all pick up up the weather excellent, even inside) The WEATHER is the ONLY thing I don't recommend about this radio.

Overall, I feel the radio is a bargain for AM-FM, and TV sound reception for channels 2-13.

I hope this review is helpful, Please leave any feedback you would like. I am interested in others experiances with this radio.