C. Crane CCRadio 3 Long Range Reception AM, FM, NOAA Weather Plus Alert and 2-Meter Ham Band Portable Digital Radio with Bluetooth

Great Radio! Great value! great sound!

One of the world’s best radios of its type.

For those of you thinking of using this as a Bluetooth speaker, forget it!!! Audio output is only 900mw on battery and 1.8 watts on A/C. You're probably thinking, "hey, that's not so bad". Well, those are with 10% THD. Yes!!! 10% total harmonic distortion. Distortion is very audible on Bluetooth music, so keep that in mind. The radio is tuned for voice, not music. For low listening environments, its fine, but don't expect it to be room filling loud.There is also a delay on Bluetooth as well. Watching streaming and/or YouTube, so expect audio to be at least 100-200ms behind.I'm still working on the AM band, but at this time, it's not as good as a vintage Panasonic RF-2200. It's nice having a twin-coil 200mm antenna, but I'm not sure if this radio can dig out the distant stations, like it's little brother ( CC radio EP pro ). The AGC can be a bit finicky, and so some stations might be hard to hear. Slightly tuning off frequency and tuning back can resolve this in most cases. I still prefer the manual control of the CC radio EP pro.FM is quite good. Still, the KING is the Eton field, but the CC radio 3 can hear distant stations. One issue I have is how short (@22") the FM antenna is. This radio might hear better with a longer dipole, like the Eton field (@46"). It's nice that it tucks away, but I bought this radio for DXing all the bands, and we like big antennas. Even the little brother (EP pro) has a longer FM antenna (@36"). Come on C Crane, give the next CC radio 4 a longer FM antenna. For those looking for good FM, this radio is very sensitive and selective, but it needs a longer antenna.Battery usage is quite good, so no complaints there. If I had to nit pick, drop the D cell battery's and move to C cells, to reduce weight. Better yet, add the feature of running on a single 18650 batteryThis brings me to my next minor gripe. No built in handle. You get a notch in the back, for carrying the radio. A dedicated handle would help and be more secure in moving this portable unit around. It's not light with battery's (over 4 lb's)Weather channels are nice. A+ in this department.The 5" speaker is very nice. It is rated at 4 Ohm, 6 watts. Unfortunately, it is tuned for voice (not music), and the amplifier that drives this speaker is very weak. C Crane, this is area that needs attention.2 meter band is nice to have, but not really required on such a radio. Keep in mind, this is not a shortwave radio. 2 meter band only covers Ham/VHF in the 144 to 148 MHz.For the price ( $210 as of this writing ) is a bit hard to swallow. I have many radios, and this is a 4 out 5 stars for me, but the price is just to high. Even at $169.99, this might be still a bit overpriced, but more reasonable. The EP pro is $90, and well worth it, but you give up Bluetooth (so what), weather, ham/2 meter band, sleep, radio presets, and digital tuning display. Are these worth $120 extra? That depends on your needs. If "all" you're looking for an AM/FM radio for DXing, then the EP pro is perfect.I hope this helps some of you sitting on the fence of which CC radio to get. This isn't a bad radio, but minor improvements need to be made to justify the price.

I’ve had the CC radio 2 for years and love it. Other than Bluetooth, there is no discernible difference in sound or performance. It’s great to be able to stream music. And the weather alert has several different alert settings so you can be prepared. The radio has separate bass and treble knobs but the overall tone of it favors upper midrange to make talk radio sound good. It does ok with music. It has a large speaker but the bass is a little weak. There aren’t many manufacturers making high end radios anymore so there is not a direct comparison. If you want a well made radio that sounds good and will last a lifetime this might be a good choice. I would not consider it a rugged radio so you might look elsewhere if you plan on taking it to a job site or camping. Maybe consider the Sangean Bluebox.

I wasn’t expecting this radio to be as big as it is. I also have the smaller version(AA batteries) I’ve had forever. With my recent power outage, my Ccrane was pretty much my lifeline until I had to evacuate because of the fires.This one is built just as strong(D Batteries so now I stock up on AA & D batteries)Also, when my power went out, my radio worked perfect without all the interference of all my other electronics on.Definitely recommend this radio. Now I keep my mini in the kitchen and this bad boy in my room.** Also, from almost losing $1.5k of food in my back up freezer I bought the Ecoflow delta pro 3 battery charger. When I save up a little more $$ I will get the back up smart battery.A solid investment ✌🏻

I have no complaints about this radio.I live in the San Francisco Bay Area where there are about 70 radio stations (AM and FM) scattered throughout nine counties. Being located about half-way between San Francisco and San Jose I receive signals from both cities about equally.Nice tunability with both FM and AM reception. It picks up and locks in on a few of the low power (college / non-profit) stations in the area pretty well.Getting good reception on the SW band as well. Don't even need the 15 dollar extra external antenna in this area. Although it might be interesting to see the difference it would make.I get 5 of the 7 weather service stations it is pre-programmed with. Works well for me.The bluetooth set-up is really cool with the feature of using 3 of the pre-set buttons as controls for the bluetooth player. Although when I connect my Blueray player to it the "pause/play" button does not function. I can't say I have a complaint about that because it really doesn't bother me.The sound quality is great for a radio of its size. Having the bass and treble adjustments available is just icing on the cake for me.It's a decent little radio.No regrets here.

I love my C. Crane Radio. I like all of the features it offers and I will always own one.

I wanted a SW and weather radio capable receiver for a while, and I went back and forth over whether to get this CCrane or the comparable Eton model. Overall the CCrane is easy to use, gets excellent reception and has a lot of actually useful features (not just window dressing bells and whistles you probably won't use), but my main complaint is the sound quality. It's very tinny and end almost entirely devoid of low frequency reproduction. I probably should have gotten the Eton, by I'm not seriously remorseful. It's still a good unit.