I like the ones who expect a $50.00 radio to perform like a $1500.00
radio and get mad when they find out that it does not.

I don't know: I've seen the degen 1102 in action against a number of high
class radios and the 1102 could sure as hell hold up just as well as the
other $$$ ones

Perhaps some people expect such high-dollar performance from low-cost radios
because other people make claims like John's (not that he's 'wrong', it's his
opinion)... but I'd safely say that a Degen or Kaito 1102 radio would not
satisfy me nearly as fully as the Drake R8B did, or the Icom R75 does, and
while a lot of that qualification would necessarily be based on my listening
needs as opposed to someone else's, there's a basic feature and design gap as
well as price gap (which is why there's a price gap at all).
Now, I'm not at all saying that cheap radios equal cheap performance
*automatically* (most of us can testify to that based on our own experiences)
but a lower-priced radio that was not designed with features, filtering and
stability as a higher-priced radio will necessarily be different, and likely
inferior overall, to the higher priced radio.
But it's all relative.
It's just that sometimes, a person will read a claim of "this cheaper radio
works just as well as (big-rig-model-here) works" and accept it at face value,
not considering the many factors which would cause such a claim from one
reviewer or user.
I do have to say that it's neat to see the number of cheaper radios available
now which offer some surprisingly good listening for the buck. But many of
these models have limitations (naturally) that mid-to-higher-priced radios
don't have. The gap is narrowing, to be sure, but we're still a long way off
from a pocket radio acting like a Watkins-Johnson.
Linus