I have owned this radio for 2 years. One of its best features is that it can be plugged it or run on AA batteries. The battery feature is a must for weather purposes. Anytime the power has gone out we have been able to rely on this radio to keep us informed and updated on our local weather. The radio itself is a good quality for the price. It produces a nice sound that while it lacks fullness, gets great reception and does not have a tinniness or fuzziness to it. I am able to tune in even the most difficult local stations with the red LED light on the front of the unit that tells me when I have pin pointed a station. I keep it in the kitchen and the only thing that seems to interfere with it is the microwave. When you are running the microwave you lose some reception quality, although this most likely is because I have them plugged into the same outlet. It has exceptional volume and takes very little to hear it clearly. The antenna is sturdy and allows you to rotate it 360 degrees and move it up and down for optimal reception. To this day I have never had to replace the batteries, even after running it all night during a recent 14 hour long power outage. Also handy is that when the power does go out you do not have to do anything special to switch it to battery power or back to AC once the power returns. It does this automatically. The weather band is useful for getting any local weather bulletins. You simply set it to your local spot and if there are any bulletins, it airs them. You obviously have to leave it on for this to happen, but at night you never have to worry during bad weather seasons. If severe weather is coming your way it will wake you up with that annoying noise that always precedes any weather news. We have experienced this only once, and it worked better than any alarm clock to wake us up. The TV band can function in much the same way as the weather band, although those stations often play talk or music radio. I find it difficult to sleep with all that going on so I prefer the quiet that the weather band allows. This has been a great radio for us and we are pleased with its capabilities as well as good radio reception.