Could have been a grat radio.

If it worked, it would be one of the best radios around.
The features are fantastic.

Unfortunately, there have been BIG reliability problems, I returned mine as many have.
If you want this radio, I would wait until it becomes clear if the problems have been fixed.

Well worth the price for the features and performance

Great radio combineing the best aspects of portable (though no carry handle unfortunatly) and table top. Circuit City (where I got mine) is selling these for half of Amazon's price currently. It comes with a pretty steep learning curve compared to your average radio but if you fully read the manual all things are made quite clear. This is the next generation of Grundigs after the Satellite 800 of the mid 80's but with a new brand name and a product recall for about 2k of them. Me I've had no problems with mine so I guess I got lucky with the manufacture of it, made in India as it is (cheap labor can be taken for what it's worth).

Expect to shell out another $50 or so plus the price of subscription to XM satellite commercial free airplay, maybe if I fell so motivated I'll spring for that but at present I'm safisfied with all the entertainment and news that's available free of charge.

Please read the manual before judging this device, the paper one is well printed and they also include  more

A mixture of good and bad

With nearly all portable SW radios made in China now, you can expect some quality control issues. But in a $500 portable radio? I bought mine to use during power outages in hurricane season. I didn't even take it out of the box until the first hurricane of the season, and the display was defective (a problem that is rampant in these radios). After spending another $250 to get a new display, I had a bad taste in my mouth. This radio is a combination of excellent engineering and design (with the help of Drake Radio) and absolutely horrid materials and quality control. The era of the high quality SW portable radio is fading faster than this radio's display screen. Grundig should have built it in the Western World for $200 more. It could be a marvelous $700 radio with high quality parts. Instead, it is a Rolls Royce built with Yugo parts. I would rather have a Yugo built with Rolls Royce parts.