The best wind-up radios
The wind-up radio was famously invented by Trevor Baylis in the early 90s as a way of providing better communication and education in poor areas of Africa -- specifically to help stop the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS. His original concept, the 'Baygen', has been phenomenally successful and his original partner, Christopher Staines, went on to establish Freeplay. It's now one of the world's leading manufacturers of self-sufficient products.
In the 90s, everyone was worrying about the ozone layer -- not carbon footprints and climate change -- so the wind-up radio was a social, not environmental, product. Since then, awareness of global warming has made consumers more environmentally minded. But more than just a bandwagon-jumping eco-gadget, the wind-up radio is genuinely useful and incredibly sensible -- whether you're a 4x4-driving oil baron or a placard-carrying eco-warrior.
So what's on the market? We've tested five of the most popular and readily available designs, from some of the biggest manufacturers -- including Roberts, Freeplay and Eton -- and have been greatly impressed. In fact, all the radios we tested worked really well, and we would happily recommend all of them as great man-powered radios. They may not chop the toes off your carbon footprint, but they'll certainly cut down your battery and power-adaptor use.
Eton specialises in emergency-ready, feature-packed designs with sirens, flashing lights and mobile phone chargers all built-in, while Freeplay goes for high-quality and high-tech designs that even manage to squeeze in solar panels and DAB digital reception (although wind-up DAB technology is still a bit power-hungry to be great just yet).
As for the amount of power you get from spinning a little handle, on average our radios got about 30 minutes of playback for one minute of vigorous winding, and only needed quick top-ups to keep the radio going. This really isn't a hardship, and we can't see any real need to use the AC chargers they all come with other than an initial charge to get the battery working properly.
Without a shadow of a doubt the Freeplay Summit is our favourite wind-up radio on the market at the moment. It's built to last, has a solid, easy-to-use winder and even has a clock, alarm and automatic tuning. The Freeplay Devo is also a great choice -- assuming you use the DAB on mains power and FM/AM when you're out and about -- but if size really matters you won't find smaller than the Roberts Wanderer.
So as you can see, we're converted to people-powered entertainment, and are pretty sure one of our radios on review will be right for you.
Eton FR350 Wind-up Radio
Freeplay Devo Wind-up Radio
Freeplay Summit Wind-up Radio
Rhino Powerplus Wind-up Radio
Roberts Wanderer Wind-up Radio
