So far so good!
I was a bit worried when ordering this product that the version I might receive would not have the ability to select what type of alerts you want to be woken up for. I ordered the Clam Shell package version of this radio and I am happy to report the following: The package had WR-120 written on it and a sticker that stated it was the WR-120C, this concerned me thinking that maybe this was NOT going to be the EZ version which has the alert select functionality. Once opened, I was happy to see that the model written on the back of the radio itself is in fact WR-120EZ.
For those who don't know, the WR-120EZ is the latest version of this radio. It has additional functionality not found in previous versions which includes the ability to select what alerts you want to hear (you can tell the radio that you don't want to be alerted to flood watches for example) and also allows you to setup your location without having to lookup the SAME codes.
Setup of the WR-120EZ is super simple and the radio is loud and sounds great. The radio functioned perfectly during our state-wide tornado drills yesterday and I am happy with this purchase. This is my first Midland weather radio, my previous radios have been Acu-Rite, and I think this radio is much easier to use than those, although I still like those hand held Acu-Rites as well.
I am happy!
Great monitor for weather alerts and emergencies. Biggest Pain and hopefully there are other units that have resolved this. For some reason in Midland engineers minds they made a product that if you don't have an Alert in 10 days, this unit decides to alert you of that fact. Duh!
There is a message on the screen and if that isn't enough there is an annoying tone that continues to re-sound every 10 minutes until you reset it. OK give me a button to press... BUT NO.... You have to unplug it, take out the batteries if you use them for backup... wait a few minutes and reinsert and power back up. This is the only way to reset that annoying design and silence the alarm tone. Now if a real alert comes after this time alarm has started, it will automatically reset. This is the stupidest design... Unplug to reset... for real?
I have been dreading purchasing a weather radio for some time because they all seem too expensive for just a radio that receives the weather band. But, I figured out that it is time to take this out of the "family" budget. I literally looked at every single weather radio on Amazon. I found out that I want a radio with SAME (Specific Area Message Encoding) so it will alert for inclement weather. (tornadoes at night are an issue where I live) Most other radios seem to have issues with reliability, reception, or construction--issues I want to avoid. So, I narrowed it down to the Midland radios: WR-100, WR-120, and WR-300.
I was leery of purchasing this at first because of the limited review at the time. I found at that this is just the updated model of the WR-100, which seems to be one of the more popular weather radios. I went to Midland's website(to lookup the WR-120) and saw that the item was just released, hence the limited info.
I would consider this a great standard/staple alert weather radio. The SAME technology lets you setup your county, or multiple counties. You can find your county codes online at NOAA (search: national weather service radio codes to be taken there directly).
I really like the backlight on the display--a nice cool blue with easy to read lettering. The interface itself is great, it lets me flip through all current alerts with the up/down buttons, so I don't even have to listen to the radio to get the most up to date status. It is simple enough that my 4 year old could easily figure it out.
The alarm has 3 settings-tone, voice, and display.
-The tone alarm is loud! -- Which is great, not an annoying sound, just loud. It will wake you up. We can hear it all through our house.
-The voice alarm plays the loud tone for about 5 seconds and then goes into the radio broadcast(at the volume you set). I wish that the voice setting played just the radio, as I am used to a clock-radio alarm clock. The loud alert startles me out of sleep! I want the alarm to wake me, not scare me.
-The display just illuminates the backlight. Not useful for me at night, as I would not wake up to a soft blue, glowing light. I am sure this is plenty useful for some, and I will probably change the radio to this once we are out of tornado season.
Personally, I have not seen the multiple alert lights (5 for each-alert, watch and warning) to be all that useful because every message that my local weather service puts out does not code to the varying degree levels. I am sure this is useful for some, but I live right next to the NOAA station and they do not take advantage of this feature.(more a complaint against my local NOAA than the radio) -- ps the reception is great....because I live right next to the NOAA station, so my review of that is biased. :)
The radio runs on three AA batteries for backup. Not sure how long they last. There was no difference in reception, backlight, and radio functions when I unplugged it. This seems like this might be a great radio to do some light traveling.
I could not justify spending the extra on the WR-300 to get any additional features. (Maybe Midland can include a tone volume option in the next release model that lets you choose between several volume levels for any alert? Then the radio would be perfect.) I would have rated this 4.5 stars because the voice alert is not pure voice, but half stars are not an option, so I rounded up. Midland's Research and Product Development team seems to listen to customer reviews, so maybe the voice alarm can be fixed.
Definitely a must have family radio for safety, and the best value out there--I am glad I purchased it.
Phew! What a lengthy review! :)
I was really skeptical about ordering this radio from amazon. The reason being is that the product page listed this as being the wr120ez model, but some people had stated that they had to order the clamshell version to actually get the wr120ez, or just did not get the ez version at all. I ended up ordering the boxed edition and was happy that I did in fact receive the ez edition of this radio. I made sure the one I ordered shipped directly from Amazon. I felt my chances of getting the ez version would be much better, and all worked out.
The EZ edition has every feature I would be looking for in a weather radio. Those features are being 1:) S.A.M.E. compatible which allows you to choose which county, or counties you wish to receive alerts for. 2:) Being able to edit most of the alerts by turning them on or off depending on which alerts you want to have the siren activated for. Some such as a Tornado Warning cannot be disabled on this radio, but this is the same for any weather radio. 3:) EOM or End Of Message detection. I always use voice mode on any weather radio. This will activate a siren for approximately 7-8 seconds, and switch to the voice broadcast automatically. However at the end of a voice broadcast they always emit 3 EOM tones. What this does is tells the weather radio that the voice broadcast is finished with talking about the alert, and automatically puts the weather radio back into standby mode. Some weather radios do not detect the EOM tone, and does not put the radio back into standby mode at the end of the broadcast. Instead they usually continue to broadcast for a set amount of time which is usually 5 minutes. I find EOM detection much more convenient, but that may just be me, and my personal preference. 4:) Public Alert certified. I have had better luck with Public Alert Certified radios. 5:) Battery backup during power outages. This particular radio takes 3 AA batteries for battery backup.
For a weather radio to have all of the above mentioned features at this price point is unheard of. I'm used to spending $69.99 or more to get a weather radio that does all of these things. Much to my amazement this weather radio does every single one of these things that I would want a weather radio to do, and does them very well! And it was less than $35.00! I am very satisfied with the Midland wr120ez. I highly recommend it! One word of caution. Do make sure that the switch on the right hand side of the unit is switched to the "ON" position. Otherwise no alerts will be activated.
If you want to make sure you're woken up in the case of disaster, get this. What a feeling to be woken up in the early morning, and in a confused frenzy slamming your hand down in the hopes of turning off the siren emitting from this radio. Of course, it was providing a NOAA warning of a severe flooding which is a pretty good thing to know.
You can customize MOST of the hazard warnings, though some of the most serious ones remain on by default. It seems to be sturdy, handled getting some water on it, but the battery life is questionable when it doesn't have a power source. It may very well have been the fault of the batteries, either not fully charged or what have you.
5/5 stars, I value my life over extra sleep
Feature Product
- Public-alert certified monitor receives 7 NOAA channels with flood, tornado, thunderstorm, and other warnings
- SAME alert programming sounds an alert only when specific counties are threatened
- 25-county memory system; 90 dB siren, voice alert, and flashing LED warning systems
- Uses three AA alkaline batteries for emergency power back-up in the event of power outage
- Built-in clock with alarm and snooze; measures 6.0 x 1.5 x 5.0 inches (W x H x D); 1-year warranty
Description
The Midland WR120B NOAA Weather Alert Radio can help you be prepared for all types of emergency threats including tornadoes, floods, severe thunderstorms, civil danger warnings and more. When a severe weather watch or warning is issued by the National Weather Service, the WR120 automatically alerts you, giving you the seconds you need to seek shelter. The WR120 is capable of receiving 7 National Oceanic & Atmospheric Association (NOAA) channels. It is also programmed with over 60 alerts like hurricanes and flash flooding. The SAME localized reception allows users to program the radio to sound an alert only when weather and other emergencies threaten a selected county or counties. The technology eliminates all alerts from other areas, so users won't have to perk up their ears each time the alert sounds only to find the emergency is actually 100 miles up the highway. The radio is powered using the AC Adapter; however, use the 3 “AA” Alkaline batteries (not included) for an emergency power backup that keeps your radio working during power outages. This radio features a user selectable warning system that includes voice, display, or tone alert types. It also features: color coded indicators, alert override, silent programming, 90 dB siren, and a continuous backlighting option that keeps the LCD on. The WR120 is public alert certified and is backed by a one-year warranty. This product is recommended by the Department of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness.
The Midland WR120 has a lot of good features that work. I found it easy to program even taking the route of entering only the Counties you want to alert on. You don't have to even do that and you will still get notification but for a much larger geographic area.
It's quite loud if you want it to be and I like the Warbler sound prior to an emergency message but you can turn that off if you wish. When the message is over it resets as it should. There are some other nice features also.
Five stars if reception was better. If I don't keep it my the window reception is not good. In contrast I have a portable unit with a little stubby antenna and it receives ok where this unit will not. I can use two of the available channels on the portable unit but only one reliably on this unit. I have gone through two NOAA test days and it worked exactly as it should.
It wasn't that hard to program--the directions point you in the right direction and from there it is easy to figure out--that is directions on omitting the alerts you didn't want to wake you at night. I didn't restrict it to certain counties, as there are so many counties close by that I wanted to hear alerts for all. However, now the alert light comes on I wonder what it is about. No directions said to push the "weather-snooze" bar to hear the alert and/or local weather--I found that by accident (duh!). So when the alert light is on, I push the "weather-snooze" bar to hear what I missed. That bar also silences the alert! My daughter didn't know that either and moved the squawking unit to the other side of the house, as she couldn't make the alert stop. I researched a LOT before I purchased this unit, and now that I understand how it works, I really like it, It has battery backup.
I had an old (analog) Ra*** Sh***k weather radio that I used in the morning in the bathroom (which is an inner room in my house, no outside walls or windows). Something changed a few months ago and the reception has been terrible - not usable at all. So I didn't know if the Midland would be any better, but decided to try it, since running an external antenna would have been quite difficult and I really wanted to hear the weather before getting dressed.
The Midland is orders of magnitude better - I've had it a couple weeks (and compared it to the older one to make sure the original problem still existed) and I can listen with no problems.
As a big bonus, I can set the alarm to be "display only" - no tones or voices to wake me in the middle of the night (unlike the old one, whose alarm could not be stopped.) Wish I bought this sooner.
Signal strength isn't amazing, but we found a channel that works. That's obviously limited to placement in the house and distance from the signal origin. I found the menu process to turn on/off specific alerts to be a bit cumbersome, but with the display limited to what it is, there likely isn't a better way to set that up. It came with the thunderstorm warnings enabled by default, and when you live in the South, there are thunderstorms all the time and the alarm would sound multiple times in an afternoon. Yes, there's a thunderstorm outside. I can see it. Thank you.
Take your time and read the instructions (I know, hard for most of us to actually do). Once we got the settings figured out, including assigning the alarm type and figuring out which alerts we do or don't want firing off, it's been much better.
Just moved to a state that has tornadoes, and so I can sleep peacefully I invested in this Midland wr120 to alert me. I like the idea that I can program which alerts I want and how they will present, such as a voice or siren. What I dont love is the setup is a bit complex thoit hasugh i got through it. Also, it is connected to the NAOO so it has to have a weekly and monthly test like your tv does. You can disable those but then your radio will beep intermittently like a smoke alarm that needs a new battery until you reset it. By that I mean unplug and reprogram it or allow the weekly and monthly tests. That part is really annoying! Otherwise the piece of mind id golden ; ) This unit plugs into the wall and has battery backup. If an event happened I could grab the radio, unplug it and take it to the basement with me knowing the batteries will keep things going :) Better safe than sorry
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