OVERVIEW

Take the sounds of your favourite stations with you anywhere with this portable AM/FM radio. Tuning is easy, thanks to a simple analogue tuner, while the powerful monaural speaker gives you big volume from a small box.

The new (in 2017) Sony ICF-506 has been quite a surprise here. At a current street price of $44.95 it is an unusual combination of performance versus price. Initially I didn’t expect much from it – one reader had told me it had unusual tuning characteristics but I wasn’t clear on exactly what that meant. He surmised it meant that it was a DSP Chip (Digital Signal Processing) design and now that I have tested the radio I agree with his assessment, and I must say that the way DSP has been implemented in an inexpensive analog-tuned portable is interesting with both benefits and one potential drawback.

 I found the ICF-506 to be well packaged and it is a very attractive medium sized radio, measuring about 8 ¾” x 5” x 2 ½”. It features a very readable dial scale, a 4” speaker and an amplifier rated at 640mw which is very good power for this class of equipment. There is a convenient fold-away carrying handle, absent on so many of today’s radios.

It runs on 3 AA batteries or a built-in 120 volt AC power supply – a decided plus. However, its battery life is specified at an unimpressive 35 hours…more on that later.* There is a stereo earphone jack which will send audio to both sides of stereo earbuds but the audio is mono only…no stereo FM. Controls are basic – an On/AM/FM slide switch, volume and tuning knobs, plus Power and Tune LED’s. The US version covers the expanded AM band up to 1710 KHz while other country versions top out at 1602 KHz and operate on 220/230 volts.

FEATURES

Initial Observations: I found the ICF-506 to be well packaged and it is a very attractive medium sized radio, measuring about 8 ¾” x 5” x 2 ½”. It features a very readable dial scale, a 4” speaker and an amplifier rated at 640mw which is very good power for this class of equipment. There is a convenient fold-away carrying handle, absent on so many of today’s radios. It runs on 3 AA batteries or a built-in 120 volt AC power supply – a decided plus. However, its battery life is specified at an unimpressive 35 hours…more on that later.* There is a stereo earphone jack which will send audio to both sides of stereo earbuds but the audio is mono only…no stereo FM. Controls are basic – an On/AM/FM slide switch, volume and tuning knobs, plus Power and Tune LED’s. The US version covers the expanded AM band up to 1710 KHz while other country versions top out at 1602 KHz and operate on 220/230 volts.

Performance: Here is where I was surprised. As I said I didn’t expect top performance from this radio but on my initial band scans I was impressed by the ICF-506’s sensitivity and selectivity. It was good enough that I wound up comparing it with several radios to see where it would fall on my AM and FM Mega Review lists. But first a note about that quirky tuning behavior.

Although the ‘506 is described as an analog radio that is only partly correct. True, it appears to be analog with a slide rule dial, tuning knob and no digital buttons of any kind. But when you tune the radio you will find that it “hops” from one station to the next, and once it is locked onto a signal (and the Tune LED illuminates) there is no fine tuning within that signal’s passband. You can untune it a bit and the Tune LED will extinguish but reception in that mode is not optimized…you always want to tune until the LED illuminates. As you continue to tune the radio jumps to the next station and locks onto it. This is true on both AM and FM. This feels exactly like tuning an older FM radio with AFC (Automatic Frequency Control) engaged. Traditional analog radio lovers will not like this as it does not give a smooth, progressive tuning feel where you can fine tune a signal as you like. However, for today’s typical user this could be considered a plus in that if you are hearing a station and the Tune LED is on you will know you are getting the best reception the radio is capable of. It is true that sometimes you will land on a station and the Tune LED won’t come on…if you slightly retune you will find that the LED will come on and the signal will be louder and clearer.

One other point is that if you learn the feel of this tuning you can still get relatively good selectivity of weak signals even adjacent to stronger ones. In my location, I have fairly strong signals on 560 and 580 with an extremely weak signal sandwiched between them at 570. On casual tuning the ICF-506 will jump between 560 and 580 missing the weaker 570 between them but if you carefully tune slowly it will find and lock onto 570 and separate it quite well…but it does take some patience and care to learn this feel.

AM/FM Performance – OK, we’ve discussed the ICF-506’s design and feel but how well does it perform? Here the news is amazingly good for a radio that typically sells for around $45. It’s AM and FM reception are both the best I have seen in this class of equipment. It’s AM comes in at an impressive *** 1/2 Stars in my AM Mega Review for daytime sensitivity and the FM ranks **** in the FM Mega review.  If you haven’t tried a recently-designed FM portable radio you’ll be impressed. Again, due to the way this radio jumps from one station to the next it is sometimes a bit tough to make it find a weak station adjacent to a stronger one but with slow, careful tuning its ability to receive them is actually very good if you are careful, and once it is locked on it doesn’t drift off. Of course ultimate selectivity is not s good as with much better radios but it is good in this price range.

Sound quality is quite clear and natural on FM but a bit on the muffled side on AM – I could wish for more AM crispness, but I played the radio for many who are a little less fussy than I am and most found it OK.

• Integrated AM/FM radio tuner
• Powerful mono speaker for big sound
• Built-in carry handle for easy portability
• Listen with (3) AA Batteries1 or Plug in AC Adaptor
• wireless communication technology: 3.5MM Aux

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