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If there's a catastrophic weather event, a city-wide blackout or the polar vortex just slams down from the Arctic and you're without power, what are you going to do? Most people have no emergency plans, nothing that'll work beyond the lifetime of a AA battery or two. That's why the Eton Red Cross Emergency Weather Radio FRX3+ is such a win with its multitude of features and capabilities. AM/FM/Weather radio, flashlight, emergency beacon, clock, alarm and the ability to charge your cell phone if the power outlet's gone dead. And to charge the unit itself if there is no electricity, you can use the built-in solar panel or hand crank.
Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ gave the Eton FRX3+ a thorough test and found that the features work great, but the unit has some odd, and downright annoying design quirks that you'll want to learn about before you make a purchase decision. Is it still worth buying? Watch and find out...
Check it out on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2WzJzwG
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0:00
Is this everything you need in an emergency
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Let's find out. Dave Taylor here, and you know, when an emergency hits
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when it's a catastrophic weather event, when there's a huge power outage in your whole city
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whatever happens, it's really nice to stay plugged in and connected, but plugged in doesn't always work
0:25
Sometimes you don't have electricity. Enter this. This is the Eaton. an FRX3 plus Red Cross Emergency Weather Radio
0:35
And it's got a lot of stuff packed into a design that has some pluses but has some minuses
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But let's go through the feature set first. So first off, it has AM, FM, and weather radio
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And I'm going to go ahead and turn it on. And we're going to start with the weather report
0:53
So volume and tuning are the two dials on the side. Let's hear what my weather is
1:00
chance of rain and snow showers. Highs around 50. So this is NOAA, the NOAA weather, and you can actually set weather alerts, and that's a really
1:12
important feature. If you do have bad weather, you want to know if there's like a tornado warning or something
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like that. Now, in addition, there on the front, you can see in this close-up, there's actually a way to
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switch dials, and now I'm on FM radio. up and then a guy like me sounds good but you know if we're doing FM radio honestly we should
1:35
pull out the antenna so we can do that and that will significantly improve our reception
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and you also have AM radio household and how much you make I do not know if your son would be
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supplemented or not I don't know what program this is but here's the thing is that again when you're
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in an emergency situation when there's been a huge earthquake when there's a tornado when there's a
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blizzard when the polar vortex is hitting you then you want to be able to access all these different
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bands on a radio that doesn't need to be plugged in now that leads us to let me go ahead and
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turn this off that leads to the whole discussion of power and this radio and this is interesting so
2:17
it has on the top perhaps the most obvious feature is it has a solar panel now it's a very small
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solar panel and it needs to be in actual direct sunlight. So going through your window, having a sunny
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spot on the floor, that's not as good as putting it outside. If you have it in direct sunlight
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it can fully charge the lithium ion battery that's in the back. It can do a full charge in 10 hours
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of sunlight. And that's great because that means that if you leave it out during the day
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then you actually have this as a resource all night. That's important. Now, you can plug it into the
2:55
wall and on the back there is this rubber unit that comes off and gives you access to a bunch of ports One of which is a mini not micro mini USB plug and that lets you charge it through any wall charger you have
3:10
And that gives you a full charge in two hours. Now, on the front, you can't help but notice there is the crank
3:18
So, post-apocalypse, this might be your only choice if it's terrible weather or it's like nuclear
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your winter god forbid um and you can't use solar then you can do this but i want to tell you this crank
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is easy to use but it's going to take you a long time to get any benefit out of it so four minutes
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of cranking this will get you 10 minutes of radio they don't even tell or say how long it would
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take how many hours it would take to do a full charge of the battery um my guess it's more than
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you would have motivation to do so you would be just like please let it be sunny please use
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a solar panel. I don't want to crank it for four hours. But it is something. It is something where
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if it's in the middle of the night and you are in a situation where you can't get to the sun and
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there's no power, you can crank this and at least turn the radio back on for a little while
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till it dies. Now, let's see. There's also the flashlight and emergency red beacon. So those
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are helpful. Not hugely bright. It probably looked pretty bright because I was pointing it right
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at the camera, but the flashlight is a little disappointing and it's lumens, but for what it is
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it's just a last-minute crisis, you know, one more feature on this thing. So let's see. What else can
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I tell you? There's a clock, as hopefully you can see the screen is backlit. For reasons I don't
4:42
understand, there are a lot of the reviews of this complaint about things that don't actually
4:46
apply. So one of the things people say is that once you put the battery in the back and it uses a
4:52
custom lithium ion battery is that you can't put it back in and have the unit close. Well
4:59
I put it back in and it closes and it's perfectly flat. So not sure what people are complaining
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about. Maybe they just need to learn how to close a battery. But it is important to notice that it is
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a custom lithium ion battery so you can't have as like emergency second backup. You can't just put
5:18
a couple of double A or AAA batteries in here. And that's an issue. In a, in a unit
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that's designed for emergency and crisis purposes, if you're lying, you know, lithium ion battery
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is dead or not working or not functioning properly, you are kind of up a creek because there's
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no way to power this. There's no emergency alternative short of getting a new battery from the vendor
5:39
Not a great solution. Let's see. What else can I tell you? On the back, let's go back to the
5:45
back ports because there is AUX in. I don't know why they have that. There is a headphone jack, which is
5:52
useful There the mini USB for charging and then there a full size USB connection for actually charging your cell phone off of this unit And again that something where you need to figure out how it works
6:06
rather than just plug it in and assume it's going to function. Because you plug in your phone, and then you push, there's a button here
6:14
and the button says sell. So you push that, and now you're able to actually charge your cell phone
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because that actually makes that USB port go hot. When you're done, you push the button
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and the word cell vanishes from the display and that USB plug now is no longer pushing out power
6:32
So if you don't do that, then you will plug in your phone and you will say it's not charging
6:37
What the heck? Why do they say it charges a cell phone? Now, this is not a huge super fast charger, but the battery is 2,600 milliamp hours
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so it's probably about the same size plus or minus a little bit to the battery on your phone itself
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So again, in a complete crisis, you can have this in the sun to charge, and then you can plug in your
6:58
cell phone and you can actually have your cell phone get some charge back and work for a little longer
7:03
I hope to not experience that sort of level of multi-day no power crisis, but this would be
7:09
helpful in that situation. Let's see. What else can I tell you about it
7:14
There is a set of buttons along the top here for setting your alarm and managing an alarm
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I don't know why I would use this as an alarm clock. you know, if it's the end of the world, I'm probably not going to be sleeping very well
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I will note that the design, this is a really mixed bag with design
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So, you know, these buttons here are really kind of stupid hard to get to
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I understand why, because the solar panel needs to be without anything blocking it
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But it's still frustrating to have them here rather than maybe on the front
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But if it was on the front, it would get in the way of the display. So speaking of design, the power button is
7:51
also one where I wish there was a lock on it or some way like you could like turn it
7:56
and now it won't turn on so that if you throw this in your kit bag because you're
8:00
running away from all those zombies you don't want to get to the other side or like
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find your little retreat and then go to turn it on and it was on the whole time and
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now the battery's dead that would be frustrating probably not your biggest
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concern if you're in a bunch of zombies but still you know it's one of these
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things where they could have just designed just a little bit of a tweak on the design and then that button wouldn't turn on and off so easily. Let's see. What else can I tell
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you is that, you know, it is plastic. It is primarily all plastics, but I feel like the build quality
8:35
is good. You know, it's not fantastic. This is not a multi-hundred dollar prepper, someone in like
8:42
the depths of Idaho who has their own bunker. This is not that kind of device. This is just a nice
8:47
affordable unit you can put maybe under your sink in your kitchen and then if there's ever a
8:52
crisis you can pull it out and you got something so that nice let see um the only other things i wanted to mention was that um you know from again from a design perspective why they using mini USB for charging I completely cannot explain And worse
9:09
not only they're using mini USB, but there's nowhere in the unit to store the cable that you need
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So odds are actually pretty good that if you went to charge this, you couldn't find your cable
9:22
It does come with the mini USB cable, but why didn't they just use micro-eusb
9:26
USB, it's so much more common and you're so much more likely to have that cable in your house
9:31
So that's a bit disappointing. The button placement is a little weird
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The fact that it doesn't actually let you use other types of batteries like off the shelf
9:41
double A's just in case of a crisis or in case the battery, the lithium ion battery goes bad
9:47
Again, not great design. But at the price point, it might all be acceptable because this is a whole lot more versatile than having nothing at all
9:56
So let me tell you about the price, and I think you'd be surprised at how inexpensive this is
10:00
This is actually not a bad solution if you're doing just some basic like first aid kit and emergency setup and everything
10:08
This is not a bad addition to that kit. But before we get there, let me ask if you can go ahead and subscribe to my channel
10:14
Really appreciate when you do that. Really helps me out. And I guess my cat is not impressed
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So he is just going upstairs. There you go. Special celebrity siting
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It's not Stan Lee. sadly, but it is my cat. Okay, focus. Now
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the Eaton, FRX3 Plus, and the plus is important. It's a different model. The FRX3 is a different unit to this
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So this is the FRX3 Plus Red Cross Emergency Weather Radio, and it will cost you not $6999
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which is their recommended retail price, but on Amazon, when I checked, it was 4682 at Amazon.com
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So for $46, for $47, this is actually not a bad addition to your kit or your setup, whether you're an apartment dweller on the 37th floor in Manhattan or whether you're in the middle of some rural area
11:07
So this actually, you know, go in knowing its strengths and weaknesses, and I think you might find this a pretty nice unit
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So with that, this is Dave Taylor. I better get back to my weather forecast to see what I should be expecting
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And by the way, there are seven weather channels. So typically what you do is you're going to change channels till you find one that's broadcasting in your region
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That's entirely normal. So all the other ones are probably going to not work, but that's how it's designed
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Anyway, I'm back to my weather, which means I'll catch you in my next video
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