American Red Cross ARCZG100W ZoneGuard Weather Radio (White)

• S.A.M.E (Specific Area Message Encoding) Technology to receives alerts for your area
• 3 level High-visibility color alert light bar (Green - Watch, Orange - Warning, Red - Alert)
• AM/FM/NOAA Digital Radio with6 preset stations
• Digital Alarm Clock
• Elegant, thin form factor with angle stand and wall mounting options

This is a really nice radio....BUT only after you have it set properly!!

I highly recommend people to have 3 new AA batteries for setting this up. It does not come with batteries. Comes with an AC adapter, and a plastic stand you install in the back to have it "sit" upright. The reason I recommend batteries is that it will be much easier moving it around for setting it up.

Also set aside a good 30 minutes to program this radio. As I will go into, everything is there in the book, but it can be puzzling on moving the arrows up, down, left, right, menu to get everything done properly.

Next, you had better have good lighting as the directions are VERY small. A magnifying glass might help. You can go to the homepage of ETON:

there you will find PDF instructions you can print and/or which you can enlarge.

The alert settings can be confusing. A menu button followed by four directional buttons around it are what you use to set the alerts for the weather alerts which are voice, siren, or silent.

It ships with ALL counties around you to be alerted for weather alerts. However you can set it for your county single, or whatever counties you prefer.

Here is where Eton makes no mention of what they mean when they say "codes." The average person is not going to know what they mean by "codes." When Eton says "codes" they are referring to the NOAA Weather Specific Area Messaging Encoding (SAME) codes that are available for all of the counties in the United States and it's properties and marine. You can find the county codes at the NOAA website listed state-by-state.

When you program the codes (see instructions) the screen defaults to the number 1 through 25. Meaning the first would look like: "01Code"

second

"02Code"

Setting up your local NOAA radio is simple as there are only 7 to choose from, then you click the memory button.

Also you can listen/store AM/FM radio channels. 6 AM and 6 FM presets.

Telescopic antenna that rotates.

You can store 25 SAME county alert locations.

I think it's terrible for Eton not to give any detail on how to find them or give a description other than saying "codes" in referring to the weather alerts. And also to give instructions in such small lettering. For all of this I'm taking away one star. Otherwise it would be a five star radio!

It is a great radio to notify you of storms! You are always one button away from your local NOAA radio.

The screen is a bright blue screen. You may need to hold the radio at various angles as the lettering is block style, not all connected.

The speaker is good. The volume is very good. Just at a 2-3 is loud enough.

The top of the radio flashes and lights up various colors depending upon the weather alert. Red for the Warnings, Yellow for Watch, Green for Advisory.

Siren goes off for about 5 minutes. And it's loud enough to wake (most) people.

Also there is a digital clock on the front. And it has an alarm feature you can set.

There is a battery indicator on the upper right corner of the screen.

Lightweight, easy to carry.

There are holes in the back for you to mount it on a wall (screws are not included).

Keep in mind the alerts are 24/7. So if you have the siren on and you have a tornado warning when you are sleeping, it will wake you up. Could save your life. Also if you have it set for ALL counties, it will give you alerts to neighboring counties which you do not care for. And here is why the SAME codes are important.

Also if you click the RIGHT arrow at anytime, it will scroll for you previous alerts or say NO ALERTS.

It "holds" the information you program it to for a few seconds. I tested it by removing the batteries, then putting them back in. I'd say it took around 20 seconds. My advise is to always keep batteries inside it (regular batteries, NOT charging type as it does not charge batteries), and you can keep it plugged in.

This radio would come in very handy during a severe storm. As long as you have power and/or batteries you'll be able to listen to weather alerts, and AM/FM radio.

Again, if the instructions were larger and gave more detail. And details on the SAME codes were either provided or an Internet address was provided for them I would of given it five stars.

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I like the basic design of this -the small sleek size, nice layout of buttons, large display. The radio reception seems to be decent, although mounting it on the wall is not possible in my area, since I have to turn it various directions to get a couple of local AM stations. Weather band reception is OK, as is FM reception.

That's about where my positive feelings for this little radio end.

It is way too difficult to set up, NOT with regard to the physical aspects of hitting the correct buttons in the correct sequence, but rather in terms of deciphering and understanding the instructions. The instruction leaflet, such as it is, is written in such small type that it's nearly impossible to read. I finally went to the Eton website and downloaded the instruction manual there, then "zoom"ed it so I could read how to set the time, store radio stations, etc.

Then there's the issue of the S.A.M.E. codes. I had never heard of this technology before I got this radio. NO WHERE in the included instructions is there any mention of NOAA, or even the "S.A.M.E." designation. On the Amazon product page, there is a mention of "S.A.M.E." in one of the product features bullets, and "NOAA" in another product feature bullet on the product page here on Amazon, but nothing that explains what "S.A.M.E. codes" actually ARE. The instruction manual tells you how to "Select the county" -OK, so what does THAT mean? The instructions don't tell you that "Select the county" really means "enter the NOAA S.A.M.E. codes." You're not "selecting" anything; you need to know the S.A.M.E. code(s) for the desired area(s), and then ENTER those according to the instructions.

This was my first weather radio -and I'm generally fairly good at figuring things out -but this had me confused for a good 15-20 minutes while I searched via google for "county code," "weather county code," etc. Finally found the NOAA site and the codes, and entered the one for my county.

And I STILL don't know what "Setting Defeat" means. I mean, I know how to set it, and I can read what the manual says, but it doesn't really tell me WHY I might want to enable or disable "defeat," and what, precisely, it enables or disables ("ENABLE: Alert when receiving a message. DISABLE: Displays the message on the LCD when receiving a message" -does that mean that when it's enabled, you DON'T get a message displayed on the LCD when receiving a message? What kind of Alert happens when it's enabled? the flashing light? the siren? what, precisely, am I "defeating" with this??)

I have no idea if the weather alert part of the radio works. We've had one National Weather Service-issued high wind warning here in the Pacific NW since I received and programmed the radio, and it didn't set off the alert -no light flashing, no "message," nothing. I intend to take this along on an extended road trip this summer (reprogramming the S.A.M.E. codes along the route), and I figure I'll probably encounter some sort of "alert-able" weather event along the way. I'll update this review then if that part works.

Meanwhile, I'm giving this 2 stars -it works pretty well as a compact "clock radio," doesn't take up a lot of space, and has decent reception. But Eton REALLY needs to do something about the instructions. The ones included with the product are useless, and the copy on the website isn't much better.

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The American Red Cross ZoneGuard Weather Radio made by Eton is unimpressive at best. It feels cheaply made, and just doesn't work all that well. For my rural area, the reception is horrible when compared to my Midland WR-300 unit. Where the reception of my Midland unit is crystal clear on the local station and 2 other nearby stations, this American Red Cross radio only picks up the local station with so much static it is barely understandable. When the alarm does manage to go off (it misses 4 out of 5 alerts when compared directly to my Midland unit), it does not auto-shut off; the weather broadcast will keep playing indefinitely until the radio is manually reset back to standby mode by the user.

The one nice thing this radio does have is a slim design with keyholes that allow it to be mounted to a wall, but with the radio failing to function in a reliable and useable manner, it is rather a moot point. I would recommend looking to other models with better reception if you rely on weather radio for your alerts. NOAA WX radio are the alerts direct from the proverbial horse's mouth the instant they are made, so having a weather radio actually capable of receiving these alerts is a good idea, just make sure you get a model that has good reception.

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The radio is a radio...not great sound or anything fancy. The weather band picks up clearly and works fine seemingly. We haven't had any alerts for me to see the colors flash, but I am currently in Pittsburgh, so it unfortunately won't be long. The directions are super tiny, but I found them to be easy to understand and was able to program the radio with little difficulty.

I consult for a parking company and knowing the weather and road conditions is important. The office is horrifying and disorganized. Mounting this flat radio to the wall was perfect. The weather now plays softly in the background and you almost don't notice it unless there is something that piques your interest.

I would recommend this radio especially for the very low profile and the ability to hang it so neatly on the wall. The functions aren't super high tech, but this is an inexpensive weather radio.

I am a fan of Eton products and trust their durability and quality.

Let me start by saying that we have a regular weather radio that works perfectly and doesn't have all the bells and whistles. My 7yo son is scared of extreme weather and always asks a million questions when ours says something, so I thought this would be great for him in his room. I loved the idea of the color changing light bar, so that he has a clue what is going on without having to immediately freak out. I also liked that it could be programmed to only make noise for certain things.

Well, the excitement stopped there for me. It showed up with a tiny instruction booklet with an even tinier font and unclear instructions. So, I came here to see what other reviewers were suggesting and from there went to the website and understood a little better. After a little time and frustration my husband was able to get it set up for our area and where it would only actually make noise when there is a tornado warning. We keep it in my son's room so that he can look at it whenever he wants. As far as how often it goes off, there has been no extreme weather at all around here in the last month, so I can't say how it does in those situations yet. I put batteries in it so he can unplug it and carry it around with him for the music or even take it to his safe place in a storm. I'll update my review whenever we have bad weather and it sounds the alarms.