Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've been a professional meteorologist over 40 years ... tornado chaser ... Air Force hurricane hunter ... extreme weather guy ... Here in the heart of Tornado Alley nothing is more important to us than a reliable weather radio. We have trusted Midland for a long time and I think we've owned many of their consumer models. Here's a quick review of my new WR400 that arrived the day after Christmas: THE GOOD. This Midland WR400 has great, sleek external design and should be a super alarm clock radio for most people. Some reviews said it was too bright for bedside. That is NOT true. The menu function allows about 10 levels of backlight brightness and the low settings are great at night. The menu and operation are much easier and much improved over previous models ... the weather service’s SAME codes for your location are built in! You can now exclude specific extraneous alerts that you do not want to hear. The speaker is good and the volume control is smooth. Reception for FM is good. NOAA weather radio reception is as good as the WR100 was. THE BAD. Not much. AM reception beside the bed is always a problem and not that good due to electrical interference. The telescoping antenna is more problematic beside the bed, since it starts poking into lamps and such and hard to make look good. I got an external antenna, Sangean ANT 100, which is available on Amazon. THE UGLY. I did have a major issue when this radio arrived and my initial rating was only going to be two stars ... In the first hour of using the radio I was apparently the first to discover a flaw that would not allow the FM tuner to go higher than107.3, when my favorite station for OU football was 107.7. This radio, as it was shipped, would not tune up to 107.7! I sent multiple complaints. THE RESPONSE AND FINAL RATING. Midland called me back about the FM tuner complaint and assured me they had validated my concern and would be working a fix for the radio tuning problem for all of us. They did send a new one after a few months. The revised radio did arrive and corrected the tuner defect. The radio has been working fine. The reception is a bit weak and sensitive to positioning … something that may be caused by NOAA transmitter changes and issues. The external antenna fixed that. The whole solution is at least four stars now ...