Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Based on the easily obtainable specs, I thought this would be a perfect item for my bug-out bag, and one of the features that really appealed to me was Eton's literature bragging about it having an internal NiMH battery and dump-charge capability (where you could charge the internal battery through one of several methods, and then use that charged internal battery to charge your device without having to sit and crank forever.) Well, as it turns out, the internal battery for the dump charge contains a measly 600 mAh and is, in fact, a cordless cell phone battery (and a weak one at that - my old cordless phones use higher-capacity batteries!) Since even non-smartphones today have at least 1500-1800 mAh batteries (with smartphones significantly higher), the dump charge might get you one battery bar and the ability to make a single emergency call. (Which is what Eton's owner's manual admits, but you only get to see that AFTER you buy the radio.) I only found this out by Googling "replacement battery Eton FRX3" and zooming in on the picture from Eton's website to read the specs off the battery (2/3 AA, 3.6V, 600 mAh). Since this seemed too ridiculously weak to be true, I verified it by looking at the battery in an FRX3, and found that it really was a weak cordless phone battery. A call to Eton's tech support also confirmed this, and the person I spoke to said that the techs had been trying without success to get Eton to improve the internal battery for at least 4 years, as well as trying to get the AAA feature changed to AA. Needless to say, I didn't end up keeping this radio - I already have all of the features in separate devices, and while this multi-function radio might have been more convenient and compact, none of the individual features worked as well as the individual devices do.