I have to say, when this radio arrived I was initially excited. Having gone through Irma, and scrambling to find a radio that was battery operated, I was determined to be better prepared for the next time. I saw this radio, and was intrigued. Five-way power, *including* solar?? Shut up and take my money!

Well, the reality was like being slapped in the face with a big wet fish. The delivery arrived on time, so it had that going for it. But a sharp curve is coming up, and the disappoints are just around the bend! (Yes, I typed disappoints)

Unpacking:
Unpacking it revealed a bright yellow radio in bubble wrap. Also in the box, was a smaller box containing a set of cheap ear phones, and micro USB cable. (Wall wart sold separately.) For $50 (okay, $49.99), I would expect a wall plug if the unit is capable. But alas, there were none to be found. (Again, sold separately.)

The Top:
The top of the unit has a sliding switch to control which light is on in the unit. The reading light, SOS light, or the dial/side flash light. The SOS light is a misnomer, as it actually does not flash an SOS, but continuously flashes a red light on the right side of the unit. While it isn't that bright, it just might help your rescuers find you in the dark. YMMV, but I wouldn't depend on it unless I had to. If you need that functionality, actually purchase a rescue beacon. Your life (and rescuers) will thank you.

The Front:
On the front of the unit you'll find the name of the product, the speaker output, radio tuning dial, and three rotary switches. The left switch controls which NOAA weather band to tune in to for weather broadcasts, the middle one controls which radio band to tune in to (FM, AM, SW, Weather), and right controls which source to draw power from (Battery, Solar/Crank DC, and NOAA Alert). The power switch does not properly line up with the text on the front, so you can't tell which source you are using unless you count the clicks as you turn the dial. The tuning display is mounted crooked, which lead me to search for other quality control issues. I was greatly rewarded for my search. The tuning dial is equipped with a light so you can see what you're tuning into. It can be switched off and on, to help conserve your battery power. Sliding the top switch all the way to the right turned on the dial light, and an LED on the right side of the unit. While the dial was adequately illuminated, the light on the side is dim, and generally a waste of battery power. You can see the light **through** the case of the radio, which leads me to believe that the case itself is thin and flimsy. This is disturbing in a product you may come to depend on in an emergency. I'm already getting goose bumps thinking of what other shortcuts have been taken in the manufacture of this device.

The Right Side:
The right side of the unit has the LED flash light on the top, the radio tuning knob in the middle, and on the bottom, the volume control knob. When looking directly at the right side of the unit, the volume control binds when turned all the way to the left, but becomes easier to turn as you turn it to the right. The tuning knob is a little hard to turn. While this will help prevent you losing your station if you have to move the radio, it gave me concern about something breaking as I am tuning the radio.

The Left Side:
On the left side is the hand crank for the dynamo. You unfold it from the radio body, and turn (or crank) it to charge the battery. This gives you the ability to use it without any AC power. The hand crank seems "flimsy", for lack of a better word. You definitely want to go slow and easy on this, as it seems to be held in place by two plastic pins where the handle meets the dynamo. Breaking these pins or breaking the crank will ensure that you spend more time than you thought you would charging the radio.

The Back:
On the back is the battery door. Opening the battery door revealed a battery pack in its own compartment, with a connector on the end. You connect this into the provided jack to provide power to the radio. The battery pack is 600 maH 3.6v and is NiMH. Also in this compartment is room to install three AA batteries. The battery door is permanently attached to the radio, so you don't have to worry about losing it. Above the compartment is the fold out solar panel. This is to charge the battery when you don't want to use the crank. Even the manual states that using the solar panel to charge the battery will charge it slowly. This was my WTF moment. It's like they added the solar panel just so they can say that it's equipped with such, but don't actually expect you to use it. On the other side of the fold out solar panel are located the reading lights. These may be good for a quick look, but there are better options in regard to illumination. To the right of the compartment is a "protective" rubber flap. Under this flap, you'll find the earphone jack, a micro USB jack (great for charging from an external battery pack, like you would an Android phone), the AC power supply jack (adapter sold separately), and the USB jack. There is also a micro switch to turn on/off power to the USB jack. The USB jack is not reinforced by the surrounding case of the radio, so this can be moved from side to side, up and down. This seems like a great oversight, as anyone with gorilla hands (even non-gorilla hands, just takes more effort) can seriously damage this from normal use. You're counting on how securely it is attached to the circuit board underneath (Didn't open the unit, some things are like sausage. You're better off not knowing how they're made). There's a reason why there are no pictures of what's behind the flap. Now you know.

TLDR
The designers of this radio did not make this overly complicated. There is quite a lot of functionality built into this. The design and placement of things seems to be very well thought out. A quick overview of the radio manual will tell you everything you need to know to operate it affectively.

The execution of the design is another matter. If I paid $20 for this, I would accept it. Truth be told, I would expect it. The radio is very cheaply constructed. You do **not** want to depend on this in an emergency. Things will be going on around you, and your adrenalin will be pumping. The last thing you need is a device you have to treat with kid gloves for fear of breaking it, and making it inoperable.

There several areas that makes this is bad emergency radio:

1) The Crank Power device is very weak: I charged manually for two minutes, according to the instructions. The power lasted for 3 minutes. I charged again for two minutes and the power lasted for less than one minute.
2) The solar panel charge the battery, in their words "at a very slow rate". They continue, in their instructions: "it is better to crank it to charge the battery". Just imagine how slow is the solar panel.
3) The shortwave radio reception is almost non-existent. Since this is an emergency radio, the SW reception is very important.
4) They offer to give Amazon customer a free SW antenna is we submit a review. This antenna should have been included with the radio.
So, this radio goes back and I will look for something better

The hand crank works pretty well but that's about all that does. The solar panel doesn't seem to do anything and the tiny 600 mAh Ni-Cad battery that looks like it's surplus from an old cordless phone only runs for a short time. The radio is really terrible, it's made really cheaply with really cheap parts that are held together with masking tape and hot glue, you can get a better radio for $1.00 at the Dollar Store. The 3 knobs on the front don't connect to rotary switches but have a lever that moves a slide switch that is really cheap and makes poor contacts so switching bands or changing the power is noisy and intermittent. The tuning knob is hard to turn but has a lot of play in it making stations hard to tune it. The speaker is really high pitched and distorted. The Weather band function only picks up 1 station but there are 4 that can be received in my area. The AM function gets a few stations but mostly noise and the FM function seems like it is going to get some stations but they are only audible on each side of the station and when it's tuned in at the center according to the tuning LED it's very quiet and distorted and not listenable. I couldn't find any real shortwave stations on either SW1 or SW2 even with an outside antenna but there are ghost images of a lot of AM stations all across the bands making them both completely useless. The radio doesn't have an external antenna connection so when you are safe down in your bunker you aren't going to be able to get anything on this radio. It has a little whip antenna that might be able to work for FM but is way too short to get anything on shortwave and when I looked inside I found the whip is not even connected to anything! There was a piece of wire about 3" long connected to a point on the PC board marked Antenna but it didn't go to anything and looked like it might have been intended to get soldered to the side of the whip antenna inside the cover. There is some kind of white stuff all over the PC board that isn't resin from soldering or that brown Sony bond glue that shorts everything out but it can't be good.
Overall this radio is best to be avoided since it would be worthless in an emergency or any other time, unless you wanted even more frustration.

I ordered a radio and it arrived on time and the quality exceeded my expectations. The radio arrived in perfect conditions and it comes with a 24" USB cable. The radio dimensions are 7 3\4 inches in length, 5.5" height and 2" in width. The radio comes with a collapsible antenna measuring 14.5" when fully extended. The radio comes with a rubber covered nylon strap on top for easy carry and it is very comfortable to hold. All the knobs feel firm and durable. All my radio functions work as advertized. I completely drained the battery and solar charged it for 4 hours and it provided 3+ hours of radio charge. The reading, flashlight and SOS lights work very well considering their size.
Cell Phone Charging
The included USB cable fit perfectly my Samsung Galaxy S6 and can be very slowly charged by the radio. Let me emphasize VERY SLOWLY cell phone charging. While charging my cell phone I had trouble picking up radio stations. I don't know if it is designed that way or if the cell phone charging was impeding the radio to pick-up reception. I would not recommend relying on the radio to charge your cell phone.
Crank Power
After letting the battery drained, I cranked the radio for 3 minutes and that was enough to re-charge the battery for 22 minutes of radio.
I would definitely recommend the Voyager Kaito KA500L.

I just purchased this radio today and received it the same day. Love the Amazon delivery service!! I also purchased the extra antenna and the AC adapter (Kaito AD500 AC Adapter for Kaito Voyager Series Radios) that was shown by Amazon as additional items purchased with this radio. Well, I can't figure out where to plug the adapter in - I'm thinking it is the wrong one for this radio even though it says on the box that it is made for Voyager KA500 series radios. I read the tiny print in the tiny manual that comes with the radio and perhaps there is some other adap/ter made for this radio????

I wanted to try out this radio tonight with the power adapter and I am frustrated and disappointed that I will have to wait until tomorrow to call Kaito and figure out what is going on with the adapter.

I am sure I will ultimately be happy with the radio purchase - just wish I could have found out tonight how nice it seems to be.

UPDATE: 05/09/2017 - I spoke to a very friendly, helpful person at Kaito. He explained to me that the radio I purchased is a newer model and is sending me out the correct AC adapter for it.

I also asked him a couple of technical questions and he was able to give me helpful answers.

I ended up turning the radio on last night, as it seemed to have a full charge, and was able to make sure that everything worked well. I was able to receive a weather channel, an am channel, and so sort of fuzzy SW channel. I am sure that if I used the extended antenna that the SW channel would come in more clearly.

Also, the lights worked and I had fun cranking it, too!

It is a very sturdy and well-made radio that I purchased in the event of an emergency or power outage and I feel confident that it will be quite helpful if either event occurs.