Safety Made Simple Stay up to date on all the latest weather, hazard, and civil emergency information with the Public Alert Certified Midland WR-120EZ monitor. Capable of receiving seven National Oceanic & Atmospheric Association (NOAA) /Environment Canada channels each of which receives and displays emergency advisories on tornadoes, floods, severe thunderstorms, civil danger warnings, and more in 3 languages (English, Spanish, French)the WR-120EZ is a must for people who live in high-risk weat
$ 19.95
Midland WR-120,
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! 🙂
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|Midland WR-120,
I ordered the Midland WR-120 weather radio April 24 and received it on April the 27. It took me about 5 mintutes to set it up, the manual was very easy to follow. As I was looking on line to see if I did every thing right, and how to tell if the radio was working, the alarm when off telling me my county was under a tornadoes warning. I could not believe this, the TV had just told us we were in the clear. Because of this radio my family and I when to the basement of our home and was safe. I awoke this morning to find others was not so lucking.
I believe all home should have a Midland weather radio, I am glad we did.
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|Great radio!,
This is a really nice radio, with a great deal at Amazon.com! My home’s household current glitches the radio on a 6-plug extender, but I fixed that by unplugging my iPad charger and the radio’s power adapter, and plugging those into the regular outlet. When the 6-plug adapter was used, the antenna had to be in a certain position (even though it’s by a window!) and now – any antenna position I want, it works like my WR-100 did – like a charm. It hasn’t sounded yet, so I don’t have a full review. (It came on test day, but wasn’t opened until quarter of 3 PM. I’d recommend this radio to anyone who needs a radio and is WORTH EVERY PENNY!
This is a new version of the WR-100.
New features:
-Button Beeps On/Off Menu Option
-Weekly Test Siren On/Off Menu Option
-3 Languages (English, Spanish, French)
-Larger Screen
-5 alert lights per alert (5 lights per alert X 3 alerts = 15 lights), formerly 1 light per alert (1 light per alert X 3 alerts = 3 lights)
-New Warning Siren (Same as WR-100 and WR-300 except louder and slower)
Full review once I SEE an alert.
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