junius wrote:
John S. wrote:
To be honest, I would stay away from the high-priced receivers from
Eton/Grundig. Products from that company seem to have more than their
share of quality control problems so if you go with something from them
minimize your risk of loss by buying on the lower end.


Very much an issue with the Satellit 800, which was put together by the
Tecsun folks in China; but I hadn't heard of quality control issues
with the E1, which is put together by your friends at Bharat
Electronics, an Indian manufacturer of defense and civil communications
products. The E1 has been out on the market for a number of months
now... have there been quality control issues to emerge?

This was one reason why I have opted to wait it out a bit before
purchasing an E1: to see if a shakedown was in order. Kept my fingers
crossed that this wouldn't be another Satellit 800, in that regard.
But from all indicators I've seen thus far, the E1 seems consistently
solid in build quality (thankfully).

The geographic location of the manufacturing facility is not the issue.
The willingness of a marketing and distribution operation like
Eton/Grundig to pay for and insist on strict quality control and good
quality components is really the issue. Their track record of
haphazard delivery schedules and poor quality in prior products does
not give me much assurance with this latest round of receivers. Maybe
things have changed, but I would not gamble that much money at this
point.

The Tecsun-Degen group are capable of producing good quality radios,
but quality costs money that Eton apparently was not willing to invest
in the 800 project.