Anyway, they're usually about $25 but right now it's only $18 for a limited time on Amazon, so I went ahead and ordered one.

https://www.amazon.com/Retekess-Portable-Transistor-Shortwave-Recorder/dp/B01ARN28SQ

Below are excerpts of just two Amazon user reviews, I shortened it to post here (many of the reviews are really long and detailed,people seem to really love these radios)

Kath

5 out of 5 stars

Verified Purchase

Goodbye Sony

Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2016

Style: AM FM SW

Just up front, I'm a radio junkie. In the past I've had all 3 models of GE Super Radios, I tried a C-Crane (CC) radio. Had a Tivoli Model One, and a Boston Acoustics look alike. I've also had.. Grundig models.. .. unimpressive GE, Radio Shack, .. a couple of old Sony table radios, a Sangean ...., and a Sony ICF SW30 ... and ICF M410v .. and an ICF34 that I use out in the yard. I needed a new portable for my "go bag" since my SW30 stopped working correctly. ... .. Let just say that I'm impressed with this little monster. It has great reception and locks in the stations plus this tiny radio has an incredible sound. It blows my mind how well this thing sounds. BTW it has passive radiator on the back that I think does the job, loud and strong. Just for grins I put in a mini SD card just to see what the MP3 feature sounded like and all I can say is "WoW". I threw on a pair of headphones and the sound was very good as well. You've got 5 EQ presets in the MP3 mode but alas not in the radio mode, not a deal breaker given the overall sound quality. A couple of things I would like to see from this company..... Maybe the EQ presets for the radio mode as well. Being able to preset the stations in the order that I'd like them in. But don't get me wrong the auto preset feature works great and hey if you want to get to your station fast, just punch in the frequency, BAM. Maybe an external antenna plug and an optional antenna kit. A carry case for this would be nice to have as well. This radio is a KEEPER for me. If your looking for a good little radio you won't go wrong with this one

Kyle

5 out of 5 stars

Verified Purchase

It's a real beast for the price

Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2022

Style: AM FM SW

This is probably the best radio I've found under $25. .... First of all, the speaker in this thing gets surprisingly loud, and although not booming, the bass response is quite good for its size. It really is impressive for something so small it can fit into a pocket..... ... Radio reception is surprisingly good for such a small and inexpensive device. I couldn't figure out a way to tune the radio manually up or down a step, but being able to enter the frequency by number far outweighs that minor inconvenience, ...... It also doesn't receive any shortwave signals below 4.75MHz or above 21.85MHz, ...... ..The mp3 player is equally impressive, allowing dialing up the song I want to hear,... The recorder has 3 quality settings, 64Kb/s 22.05KHz, 96Kb/s 44.1KHz and 128Kb/s 44.1KHz, all mp3 format. Recording from radio and aux is fairly good quality. Mic recording also sounds fairly good, except that the audomatic level control is a bit too quick, so it is rather audible. I .... .I am pleasantly surprised by the sound card functionality in this little thing. .., .... Battery life is very good for a small and loud system like this. It's not using the usual AA or AAA batteries, but instead uses a rechargeable BL-5C lithium battery, the kind some Nokia phones used about 15 years back. This battery is quite easy to find, and I opted to purchase a 1500mAH replacement to use instead of the 1000mAH battery that ships with the radio. I seem to get about 8 to 10 hours continuous sound out of the original battery, and nearly 15 hours from the replacement I purchased. .... One of the best things about this radio is the fact that the buttons are very solid and stable. .... These click buttons cause one drawback in recording, since they make a clicking sound when pausing or stopping a mic recording, but this is definitely tolerable when considering that buttons like these will not break down easily over time.... Did I mention this thing is a beast? I have had this for nearly two years, and I take it out and about quite a bit. It has some battle scars from run-ins with pavement a time or two, but it still works, maybe better now even than it did when I purchased it two years ago. Overall, I highly recommend this radio/recorder/mp3 player/USB and line-in speaker. Nothing in this price range can touch it. Maybe it's not for the radio enthusiast, and it does have some issues, but it's quite good and feature-packed for anyone who is as price/value-conscious as myself. Definitely still a 5 out of 5 despite its little bugs.

https://youtu.be/EtaG5_HzqPQ?t=1623&si=w9Av21CT-iK4jZD2

Transcript excerpts from the 45 minute video: 

"...My name is Jonathan Reed. I spend most of my time looking at buildings, factories, infrastructure, the physical spaces where industries were born and where they collapsed. But every now and then, the object itself tells the story as Clearly as any building ever could. The transistor radio is one of those objects. It is small enough to hold in one hand. It is simple enough that a child could operate it. And it reshaped American culture, the music industry, so the broadcasting world, and the very idea of private life in ways that we are still living with today. If you are new here and this kind of history interests you, the real history, the documented physical human history of how things got built and why they disappeared, ....

..... There's something worth noting about the geography of all of this. The transistor radio was in many ways one of the first major consumer products to be designed in one country, manufactured in another, and consumed most significantly in a third. The intellectual work was American and Japanese. The manufacturing was Japanese, then Korean, then eventually Chinese and elsewhere. The consumption was global but the American market with its combination of teenager population, spending power and existing AM broadcast infrastructure was the primary driver of demand. ...

...The transistor radio did not die quickly. It faded the way most technologies fade slowly than all at once. The first meaningful competitor, arrived in 1979.  Sony, the same company that had helped create the transistor radio market, introduced the Walkman. It was a personal cassette player, also battery powered, also pocketable, also designed for individual use. But it played tapes, your tapes, music you had chosen in an order you had arranged with no DJ and no commercials and no waiting. The Walkman did not replace the Transistor radio overnight. Through the early 1980s, transistor radios were still selling in significant numbers. They were still on beaches and porches and kitchen window sills. They still played sports games through tiny speakers and went to work in the chest pockets of utility workers. They were still given as gifts, but the cultural energy had shifted. The Walkman had introduced the concept of the personal playlist, curated, controlled, completely yours. After the Walkman, waiting for the DJ to play your song felt less like a pleasant ritual and more like an unnecessary inconvenience. The appetite for control, once activated, does not easily return to patients. The FM radio format had also been growing steadily through the 1970s, and most transistor radios received only AM. FM offered stereo sound, lower noise, .... ... The audience that cared about how music sounded, and as the 1970s progressed, that audience grew, gravitated towards FM. AM top 40 radio lost its premium status. The transistor radio, an AM device, went with it. ...

.,.. Each step in that progression, Walkman, Boombox, Discman, iPod, and finally the smartphone, transferred more control to the listener and removed one more layer of the shared accidental communal experience that the Transistor Radio had provided. By the time the iPhone arrived in 2007 and made the dedicated music player largely obsolete, the transistor radio was not just outdated. It was from a different universe of assumptions about what listening to music was supposed to feel like. AM radio itself did not disappear. It survived, but it transformed. The music left AM to FM in the 1970s and 1980s. What remained on AM was talk radio, news, sports, playbyplay, agricultural programming in rural areas, .. ... By the early 2000s, the major consumer electronics companies had largely stopped making them. The market that remained was served by inexpensive imports, often sold through drugstores and hardware stores and the clearance bins of large retail chains.... ..But here is what I want to leave you with because | think it matters. The transistor radio did not disappear without a trace. It left marks that are still visible if you know where to look. The entire architecture of personal audio, earbuds, headphones, wireless speakers, portable music devices of every description descends directly from the transistor radio. The first personal listening device .... The concept of the personal device, one person, one machine, a private relationship between a listener and a signal, was first widely established by the transistor radio. Before it, electronics were communal objects shared by households. .....

.... The human need it is addressing is the same one Todd Storz noticed in a bar in Omaha in 1949. People want to hear the songs they love. They want to discover something new. They want someone or something to do some of the choosing for them. And the question the transistor radio raises which I find genuinely worth sitting with is about the relationship between limitation and richness. The transistor radio could only do one thing. It could only receive signals that were being broadcast. It could not store music. It could not connect to other devices. It could not skip. It could not be personalized beyond the choice of which station to tune to. And within those limitations, it produced listening experiences of remarkable intensity. The song you waited for. The DJ who talked to you at midnight. The distant station bleeding through from a city 800 miles away. The battery dying in the middle of your favorite song and the silence that followed. These were experiences shaped entirely by the constraints of the technology. We have removed nearly all of those constraints now and the experiences have changed accordingly. I am not saying the old way was better. I am genuinely not sure that is true and I'm cautious about the kind of nostalgia that mistakes limitation for virtue. But I think it's worth acknowledging that something specific existed within those limitations. Something that the people who experienced it remember with a vividness and a fondness ...

... The AM stations that play music are fewer now. The DJs who talk to you like you're the only person listening are harder to find, but the signal is still there. The technology still works. And for a moment, if the static clears and a voice comes through that tiny speaker, something in you might recognize something it hasn't felt in a long time. I don't know exactly what to call that feeling, but | think it has something to do with what it meant to be young and alone in the dark, with a private world fitting neatly in the palm of your hand.

Feature:

1. Global Broadcasting: World band digital receiver is an FM stereo, AM,LW,SW,SSB world band receiver, suitable for global FM broadcast reception.

2. Multiple Channels: Radio receiver uses sound bandwidth filters 0.5, 1, 1.2, 2.2, 3 and 4Khz; 22 commercial and amateur radio frequency bands are pre configured.

3. High Sensitivity: FM AM world band receiver adopts multiple conversion and DSP digital demodulation technology, which greatly improves the sensitivity of radio.

4. Portable and Light Weight: Radio receiver's lightweight and sturdy components and unique and exquisite design maximize portability. Easy to use with large tuning knobs and volume knobs.

5. Stable Performance: The radio receiver is made of aluminum alloy, which is sturdy and durable. The PCB retains the for si4735 package. Users can replace the chip by themselves and the software is compatible.

6. Applicable: FM AM world band receiver suitable for outdoor camping and listening to radio music in the kitchen are necessary for participating in parades and family life.

Specification:
Item Type: Radio Receiver
Material: Metal, PCB
Model: ATS 20+
Screen: 0.96 inch
Charging Interface: Type C
Speaker: 8ohm 1.5W
Battery Type: 800mAh Lithium Ion Battery (Built In)
Supported Frequency Bands: FM, AM (MW and (LSB and USB)

Band:

(FM_BAND_TYPE, 8400, 10800, 10430, 10),
(LW_BAND_TYPE, 100, 510, 300, 1)
,
(SW_BAND_TYPE, 1720, 3500, 1900, 1), // 160 m/524.9ft
(SW_BAND_TYΡΕ, 3500, 4500, 3700, 1], // 80 m/262.5ft
(SW_BAND_TYPE, 4500, 5500, 4850, 5),
[SW_BAND_TYΡΕ, 5500, 6300, 6000, 5),
(SW_BAND_TYPE, 6300, 7800, 7050, 5}, // 40 m/131.2ft
(SW_BAND_TYPE, 7800, 10000, 9600, 5),
(SW_BAND_TYPE, 10000, 11000, 10100, 1), // 30 m/98.4ft
[SW_BAND_TYΡΕ, 11000, 12500, 11940, 5),
(SW_BAND_TYPE, 12500, 13900, 13600, 5),
(SW_BAND_TYPΕ, 13900, 14500, 14270, 1). // 20 m/65.6ft
(SW_BAND_TYPE, 14500, 15900, 15300, 5),
(SW_BAND_TYPE, 15900, 17900, 17600, 5),
(SW_BAND_TYPE, 17900, 18300, 18100, 1), // 17 m/55.8ft
[SW_BAND_TYPE, 18300, 21900, 21200, 13. // 15 m/49.2ft
(SW_BAND_TYPE, 21900, 26200, 24940, 1), // 12 m/39.4ft
, // CB Band (11m/36.1ft)
(SW_BAND_TYPE, 27900, 30000, 28400, 133, 10 m/32.8ft

Spirit Box Manual Tune,BC-R60 AM FM Radio Paranormal-Hunting-Equipment
https://www.snagquicksaves.com/product-p-143522.html

Walmart also has them for $8.99 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Spirit-Box-Manual-Tune-Bc-R60-Am-Fm-Radio-Paranormal-Hunting-Equipment/16503018906

 Thanks to SI4732 chip equipped, this shortwave radio receiver supports AM, FM, LSB, and USB modes ... built-in 800 mAh battery, the pocket radio allows you to enjoy up to 10 hours of continuous playtime ... It supports radio searching but no memory function. ...

On Amazon there are several sellers offering it for prices ranging $37 to $49 https://www.amazon.com/Receiver-Portable-Shortwave-Headphone-Amplifier/dp/B0DYCB1QPZ

But the "upgraded" version of the exact same SI4732 radio, which includes the added hardware of a mini whip abtenna  is only $3.67

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809346402956.html

What you think?

I was ready to buy one, until a closer examination reveals it just an image printed on the cup, so if you do get one, expect very poor reception.

https://www.radioshack.com/c/audio/am-fm-sw-radios

Personally, I found the whole thing an enjoyable read and wouldn't mind having one of these radios but I'd never pay $39 for it, I would for half that price maybe.. Yeah, I'd pay $20 if the price goes down. Oh, she does mention she struggled on the AM with it because in her area AM is mostly non-existent.

Anyway, I got real curious, who wrote this? The author is Ashley Thieme, who, from what I gather from her bio she's a staff writer at Tom’s Guide, with a master’s degree in Magazine Journalism as well as a BA in Journalism, Media and Sociology. She's written for  Women’s Health UK, and Virgin Radio UK, and others and generally reports on music, literature, motorsport, entertainment and health, "..but discovering the top audio equipment on the market is what she does best."

This tiny radio is an ‘80s dream and the perfect addition to my desk on a long work day
https://www.tomsguide.com/audio/speakers/crosley-tribute-radio-review

The Crosley Tribute Radio may not be a high-fidelity dream, but honestly, I love it anyway. .. .. It has some slight static in all audio modes that further enhances the retro vibe with the sound of an old radio, where it feels like you can hear the airwaves. Other users might not appreciate the static, and that’s fine — it’s just my preference. ... ... ..

Although the Crosley Tribute Radio’s primary function is that — a radio — I loved the option to stream my own music via Bluetooth. This sounded decent, but still had that crackle of a radio. This is a cool effect and certainly felt pretty retro while I was listening, so, again, this isn’t the stereo for you if you want pristine sound. ... ..

.. Moreover, I actually preferred listening to music like this while I was working, as it feels more ambient than intently listening with hi-res gear. ... ...

... I also like that even though the Crosley Tribute Radio has a muffled, retro sound, the vocals come to the forefront. ...

... but like I said, the retro sound is what makes the Crosley so unique.

I also listened using the aux input, and while you still get that same static radio effect, this sounded better than Bluetooth playback. This is because there is less compression of the audio track over a wired connection. ....

... This radio isn’t for audiophiles who only care about having the highest quality streaming and sound. It’s for people who love to reminisce about the days we used to roll out of bed to the sounds of the clock radio. I personally love it, ......

.... But for someone who loves a retro look and sound, this radio is a winner.

This tiny radio is an ‘80s dream and the perfect addition to my desk on a long work day

https://www.tomsguide.com/audio/speakers/crosley-tribute-radio-review

This one caught my attention because he rates it highly and it's currently only $9 on Amazon w free shipping. Although didn't really need one I ordered one a few moments ago, just couldn't pass on a $9 deal for a radio Radio Jay says is good on AM!. He doesn't give it a full review, or at least not on this particular page anyway, all he says is...

Goodes NOAA or Crusader (Speaker) 11.99- – 15.99

Has very good AM/FM reception and adds the NOAA Weather band. One of the best sounding models in this collection and one of the best overall values…one of the larger models.

See it at Amazon: