The DT-300-VW's ability to pull in signals simply awed us. We used the device for weeks in a basement office that's notorious for bad radio reception, and the small radio was locking onto stations that no other device we've tested could even detect. A handy auto-scan feature makes it easy to find stations, and you can establish up to nine presets on each band the radio can access. A button on the front let us switch to mono mode to reduced static from weak FM signals, and a switch on the top can lock the unit so that inadvertent button presses don't change the station or turn the radio off.

The sound quality from the built-in speaker is merely decent, and the included earbud headphones offer a similarly tinny level of performance. We plugged a beefier set of headphones into the DT-300-VW and were stunned with the difference it made. The little radio was pumping out a rich, clean signal that made listening to stereo FM music a joy. The radio also is capable of extreme volume that overpowered our headphones at high levels.

For the money, portable radios don't get much closer to perfection, but we did find a few slight drawbacks. The biggest is that reception falls off dramatically when headphones are not plugged in. Headphones augment the built-in antenna, and without them we had a tough time picking up any stations in our basement office, making the integrated speaker more useless than it could be. We also lost all our presets and had to reset the clock each time we swapped batteries. If you want to listen to FM radio without headphones we recommend staying away from this product, but if you plan to leave the headphones plugged in all the time, the DT-300-VW is a steal. --T. Byrl Baker

Pros:

• Incredible reception
• Clear, rich, and full audio is possible with the right set of headphones
• The ability to receive weather and VHF TV bands is a nice bonus

• Included headphones are weak performers
• Settings are lost when batteries are changed