Midland - WR120B/WR120EZ - NOAA Emergency Weather Alert Radio - S.A.M.E. Localized Programming
- Regular price
- $39.99
- Sale price
- $29.99 Sale
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Product Description
Brand: Midland
Color: White
Edition: Box Packaging
Features:
- Public-alert certified monitor receives 7 NOAA channels with flood, tornado, thunderstorm, and other warnings
- SAME alert programming sounds an alert only when specific counties are threatened
- 25-county memory system; 90 dB siren, voice alert, and flashing LED warning systems
- Uses three AA alkaline batteries for emergency power back-up in the event of power outage
- Built-in clock with alarm and snooze; measures 6.0 x 1.5 x 5.0 inches (W x H x D); 1-year warranty
Platform: Windows
Publisher: Midland Consumer Radio
Release Date: 01-08-2018
Details:
Stay up to date on all the latest weather, hazard, and civil emergency information with the Public Alert Certified Midland WR-120EZ monitor.
Stay up to date on all the latest weather, hazard, and civil emergency information. Click here for a larger image
Safety Made Simple
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 three languages (English, Spanish, French), the WR-120EZ is a must for people who live in high-risk weather areas, such as the Southeast or Midwest. Plus, the seven NOAA channels offer coverage for roughly 93 percent of the U.S., so most people are well covered regardless of where they live.
Color coded Alert Indicators for over 60 types of alerts.
Rear controls/ports, left to right: external antenna, cleaning port, external alert, power button.
The WR-120EZ features Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME) recepti
UPC: 826659101963
EAN: 88022225021
Package Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.6 x 2.3 inches
Languages: English
Customer Reviews
Based on 10 reviews
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I purchased the clamshell version, which is supposed to be the EZ setup. It's not that the setup is hard, but you really do have to follow the directions step by step. The buttons don't seem very intuitive, with a fair amount of scrolling through menus using up and down arrows. It was also cumbersome to find the local broadcast and get tuned to it. It feels like technology from the '80s, but it does get you where you're going. We've already found ourselves in the path of a tornado and this radio gave us plenty of notice. It works great once it is set up.There are two different sound components on this radio. First, there's the alarm. It is quite loud and can be heard in every room of the house. Immediately following the alarm, there is an announcement with very specific information about the warning delivered by an automated voice that sounds like it's on lithium. Even at its maximum volume, this announcement is very faint. It can only be heard in the room that has the radio in it. This means every time the alarm goes off, you actually have to drop what you're doing and sprint through the house just to get close to the radio. Invariably, the first part of the message is missed. I also have dogs with severe thunder anxiety so they usually know even before the radio goes off that something ugly is coming our way. They've now associated the radio alarm with that anxiety and also me tearing out of the room just so I can hear the recorded message. Now whenever the alarm goes off, the dogs go batcrap crazy and fling themselves in front of me when I'm trying to get to the room with the radio, effectively turning my basic sprint into a sprint/hurdle event complete with a lot of wailing by everyone involved. We wouldn't have that problem at all if there was an option to crank up the volume so you don't have to be sitting on top of the radio just to hear the announcement.
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After 12 years my Midland wr120 weather radio died. I replaced it with the new wr 120ez. After easy setup, I found it worked fine on battery power but as soon as I plugged in the adapter cord, all I heard was static and no voice. Instead of returning it to Amazon I called Midland directly. After explain my problem to a very nice support person, she told me she knew exactly what the problem was and said a new power cord would be in the mail! Three days later I received a new cord! Now the radio woks fine. If you are having a similar problem, call midland.
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It wasn't that hard to program--the directions point you in the right direction and from there it is easy to figure out--that is directions on omitting the alerts you didn't want to wake you at night. I didn't restrict it to certain counties, as there are so many counties close by that I wanted to hear alerts for all. However, now the alert light comes on I wonder what it is about. No directions said to push the "weather-snooze" bar to hear the alert and/or local weather--I found that by accident (duh!). So when the alert light is on, I push the "weather-snooze" bar to hear what I missed. That bar also silences the alert! My daughter didn't know that either and moved the squawking unit to the other side of the house, as she couldn't make the alert stop. I researched a LOT before I purchased this unit, and now that I understand how it works, I really like it, It has battery backup.
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Great monitor for weather alerts and emergencies. Biggest Pain and hopefully there are other units that have resolved this. For some reason in Midland engineers minds they made a product that if you don't have an Alert in 10 days, this unit decides to alert you of that fact. Duh!There is a message on the screen and if that isn't enough there is an annoying tone that continues to re-sound every 10 minutes until you reset it. OK give me a button to press... BUT NO.... You have to unplug it, take out the batteries if you use them for backup... wait a few minutes and reinsert and power back up. This is the only way to reset that annoying design and silence the alarm tone. Now if a real alert comes after this time alarm has started, it will automatically reset. This is the stupidest design... Unplug to reset... for real?
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This comes pre-programmed but according to our county emergency management, it needs to be programmed with a local number which they gave me. As far as getting the local number into this by following the booklet instructions, I find no way to do it. I have talked to the people at emergency management and I would need to take it there for them to try to do it for me. I had an old one that quit working but programming the local number into it was difficult to figure out but I was able to do it eventually... not so with this one. There definitely needs to be more precise instructions given on how to program in the local emergency number! So I have this working and it does pick up all the amber alerts in our state but I do not get our local test alerts so not sure how this one will work or if it will even. Frustrating!!
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The Midland WR120 has a lot of good features that work. I found it easy to program even taking the route of entering only the Counties you want to alert on. You don't have to even do that and you will still get notification but for a much larger geographic area.It's quite loud if you want it to be and I like the Warbler sound prior to an emergency message but you can turn that off if you wish. When the message is over it resets as it should. There are some other nice features also.Five stars if reception was better. If I don't keep it my the window reception is not good. In contrast I have a portable unit with a little stubby antenna and it receives ok where this unit will not. I can use two of the available channels on the portable unit but only one reliably on this unit. I have gone through two NOAA test days and it worked exactly as it should.
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I was really skeptical about ordering this radio from amazon. The reason being is that the product page listed this as being the wr120ez model, but some people had stated that they had to order the clamshell version to actually get the wr120ez, or just did not get the ez version at all. I ended up ordering the boxed edition and was happy that I did in fact receive the ez edition of this radio. I made sure the one I ordered shipped directly from Amazon. I felt my chances of getting the ez version would be much better, and all worked out.The EZ edition has every feature I would be looking for in a weather radio. Those features are being 1:) S.A.M.E. compatible which allows you to choose which county, or counties you wish to receive alerts for. 2:) Being able to edit most of the alerts by turning them on or off depending on which alerts you want to have the siren activated for. Some such as a Tornado Warning cannot be disabled on this radio, but this is the same for any weather radio. 3:) EOM or End Of Message detection. I always use voice mode on any weather radio. This will activate a siren for approximately 7-8 seconds, and switch to the voice broadcast automatically. However at the end of a voice broadcast they always emit 3 EOM tones. What this does is tells the weather radio that the voice broadcast is finished with talking about the alert, and automatically puts the weather radio back into standby mode. Some weather radios do not detect the EOM tone, and does not put the radio back into standby mode at the end of the broadcast. Instead they usually continue to broadcast for a set amount of time which is usually 5 minutes. I find EOM detection much more convenient, but that may just be me, and my personal preference. 4:) Public Alert certified. I have had better luck with Public Alert Certified radios. 5:) Battery backup during power outages. This particular radio takes 3 AA batteries for battery backup.For a weather radio to have all of the above mentioned features at this price point is unheard of. I'm used to spending $69.99 or more to get a weather radio that does all of these things. Much to my amazement this weather radio does every single one of these things that I would want a weather radio to do, and does them very well! And it was less than $35.00! I am very satisfied with the Midland wr120ez. I highly recommend it! One word of caution. Do make sure that the switch on the right hand side of the unit is switched to the "ON" position. Otherwise no alerts will be activated.
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If you want to make sure you're woken up in the case of disaster, get this. What a feeling to be woken up in the early morning, and in a confused frenzy slamming your hand down in the hopes of turning off the siren emitting from this radio. Of course, it was providing a NOAA warning of a severe flooding which is a pretty good thing to know.You can customize MOST of the hazard warnings, though some of the most serious ones remain on by default. It seems to be sturdy, handled getting some water on it, but the battery life is questionable when it doesn't have a power source. It may very well have been the fault of the batteries, either not fully charged or what have you.5/5 stars, I value my life over extra sleep
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So far so good!I was a bit worried when ordering this product that the version I might receive would not have the ability to select what type of alerts you want to be woken up for. I ordered the Clam Shell package version of this radio and I am happy to report the following: The package had WR-120 written on it and a sticker that stated it was the WR-120C, this concerned me thinking that maybe this was NOT going to be the EZ version which has the alert select functionality. Once opened, I was happy to see that the model written on the back of the radio itself is in fact WR-120EZ.For those who don't know, the WR-120EZ is the latest version of this radio. It has additional functionality not found in previous versions which includes the ability to select what alerts you want to hear (you can tell the radio that you don't want to be alerted to flood watches for example) and also allows you to setup your location without having to lookup the SAME codes.Setup of the WR-120EZ is super simple and the radio is loud and sounds great. The radio functioned perfectly during our state-wide tornado drills yesterday and I am happy with this purchase. This is my first Midland weather radio, my previous radios have been Acu-Rite, and I think this radio is much easier to use than those, although I still like those hand held Acu-Rites as well.I am happy!
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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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