6 Best Radios (2024): Portable, Stylish, For Emergencies

Buy a radio and only picking up static? There’s a few things that could be at play.

Radio signals travel miles and miles to reach your home and radio of choice, but depending on the distance or the placement of your radio, you could be picking up a worse angle on the frequency. Radio signals bounce around and are reflected back and forth by obstacles, including objects in your home and even your own body. There’s no way to guarantee which spot in your house will get the best signal for the station you love best, but even moving a radio over a couple of inches can suddenly improve your signal.

I test areas on the same tabletop in my home, but sometimes find a different antenna picks up signal a little better an inch to the left versus another radio. Each radio has a different antenna design, and each radio shape will come into play too: how tall is the radio itself? and how much higher does the antenna go past it?

Some antennas seem to just be better than others: Sangean and Studebaker radios, for example, have consistently performed well in my reception tests. Telescoping antennas, which all the radios we recommend have, are often best for picking up a signal, but soft wire ones can work great if you get them in the right position. I usually get the best results by running a wire antenna up a wall to replicate my telescoping antenna testing, and they’re easy to run up the back of some shelves if you want something discreet.

You also have to ask yourself about the station you’re trying to pick up. How far away is it, and what kind of setup do they have? You can check Radio Locator to see what stations your area should pick up and how far away those stations are broadcasting from. From my testing in San Diego County, I found major stations in Los Angeles and Tijuana could be easier to pick up—likely from a better antenna system, since the height and design of an antenna relates to how well it projects a signal—than some local stations that were much closer to me. With every radio I tested, I found my local Christian Contemporary station that’s merely ten miles away was harder to pick up than major radio stations based twice as far.

My testing is based on consistency, so I didn’t hunt around to get a better signal for that local station beyond adjusting each radio a few inches on my testing tabletop. But you can, and you might have to try a few different parts on a bookshelf or a room to find where you can best get the radio signal for your station of choice. Portable radios make this a little easier since you don’t need to worry about a cord while finding that perfect spot, but I often found that even a couple of inches can make a world of difference in a radio signal.