Have the wr400 at home for years now and am happy with it. Spend the time to set it up properly so it only alarms when really needed.

If i had a gripe, the battery backup doesn't do well with eneloops but its no biggie to swap out. They should include a setting for rechargeable batteries but its not a deal breaker for me.

I don't mean to hijack your thread but if you have an active amateur radio group around you it might work out for you to get one of the cheap Baofeng radios and listen to the local weather nets on it. You will have to download Chirp and load some frequencies but it is not too hard. Then you will hear the weather advisories before the weather service broadcasts them.  

In my area NWS reps are up on the nets and spotters that are mobile report realtime conditions on the ground. You aren't supposed to transmit without a license but if you saw a tornado about to touch down they might get over it.

Just something else to think about.

D

The best weather alert radio by far is the Reecom brand, the basic model is the R-1630.

It does things that no other alert radio does and some things that only a few let you do.

It has selectable county or multiple counties for warning areas.

It has selectable types of alerts. You can turn off amber alerts and other annoyances.

It is the only one (AFAIK) that properly responds to the "End Of Message" data burst, so it turns off after the alert is played. Every other one just continues playing for 5 minutes or whatever.

It has AA batteries for backup in case of power outage, and the batteries last a long time. The Midlands I had would run batteries down very rapidly if the power was out, which isn't all that uncommon during severe weather events out in the country.

The signal reception is pretty good, noticeably better than the Midlands I had.

That is impressive. Thank you for this tip, never heard of a serious midland competitor (not that they are amazing)
For under $40 and tornado season, i ordered one and will run it head to head just for fun.


Thanks for the info friend

+1 on the Reecom.

I think it's now out of production but Midland made an ultraportable basic weather radio, the RA36451 or HH50B, that's great for
EDC carry/camping/whatever if you can find one.

I've wondered if one could buy a fire pager and set it for the single warning tone. You'd get every alert, but it's certainly portable. Some LMR handheld radios will do 2-tone paging also, some might be able to be programmed for the single NOAA alert tone. Beofengs AFAIK do not do 2-tone paging.

Lots of scanners have weather alert capability, in addition to CB's with weather tracking.

+1 on Reecom.

I could swear the Midland WR120 does as well. I seem to recall it cutting out right at the data burst. I know my other one (forget the band) doesn't, because after alerts, the midland stops and the other one plays for ~5 minutes.

Midlands are solid and work. If it has SAME it will work fine.

I have been running this side by side with my Midland WR400 and its getting a workout today in  N. Texas.

So far I can confirm that:

- Both the radios play the main alert once, then stop at the EOM and dont drone on for long time.
- Both are plenty loud with alerting
- Both have eye catching visual alerts, Reecom uses very bright multicolored LED and WR400 uses bright multi color flashing word indicators
- Both have select-able alerts types for your county (SAME/FIPS) and I was able to turn off the audible alerts for most everything except for the few warnings I wanted to know about like Severe TStorm or Tornado Warnings but still get a visual alert for the silenced ones.
- The Reecom does seem to alert a few seconds prior to the Midland most of the time but I dont know if thats just where its located in the house or what. Maybe this is indicative of better reception? Not sure.
- Both arent hard to setup but the UI on either could be better for sure. Once you get the hang of how they work its pretty easy just not always intuitive.

I still need to test the battery backup but have no problems believing the Reecom is better, I was never impressed with the WR400 battery performance.
The Reecom doesnt have a battery life indicator, which annoys me, but its not the end of the world. The WR400 has a battery indicator and its almost always at 1 bar even with fresh batteries.

The Reecom 1630 appears to do everything the Midland WR400 does (minus AM/FM radio) for nearly half the price.
I dont think it does anything that the WR400 doesnt but it is a good performer and a better value than the WR400 if you dont mind not having the integrated AM/FM radio.

I have been using Sangean CL-100 for about 10 years.

Sangean radios are top quality.  The 100 has been my primary for a decade.  I have several smaller Sangean radios, they are all great.

Couple add/edits to the above post - past several days in North TX have given the Reecom 1630 a workout (numerous storms and a F3 12 miles away in past several days) and would like to add
- It does do better than the WR400 with monitoring the active alert time remaining and maintaining a historical log of previous alerts.
- it definitely alerts about 1 second or so sooner than the WR400, in my house, in my setup, etc - no idea if this is always the case, even if it is, its not a significant advantage other than it may be a more sensitive receiver

I'd like the battery backup to have a measurement display
I'd like the physical layout to be better in areas but not deal breaker, just more functionally designed
- its currently designed to work best hung from a wall but offers no wall hanging ability
- design it for desk/nightstand like WR400 or make it wall mountable but pick a design currently not ideal for either in minor ways

Its a very solid performer and for half the price of WR400 its a no brainier