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While looking at available receivers in the past few months, I came across a new name in radio, Choyong radios. Unknown to me I looked further into their website and started seeing reviews of a new kind of radio. For the first time this receiver, the model LC90, would be branded as a multiband Smart Radio. 

The receiver is not only a traditional Longwave, Mediumwave, Shortwave, FM radio, it is also an Internet Radio capable of connecting to your Wi-Fi and even has a 4G connection with a SIM card. 

The receiver was rather expensive with the exchange rate of US to Canadian dollars. I decided to contact the company directly and use my OfficialSWLchannel’s popularity on YouTube to help get a free radio to unbox and review. (See both links at the end of the article.)
To my surprise I received a very friendly email that asked for my postal address as they were happy to send me a radio. I have to say, having had communications with a radio company, they have been great. 

Unboxing

The radio is packed in a very beautiful box. Choyong took great care to make sure the experience is close to opening an expensive iPhone. The box contains the radio, a charging cable and a small manual that has the bare minimum of information on how to use the radio. 

Shortwave

I already own an Internet radio, the Sangean WFR-32, that I do love but like many other connected radios it has many issues the you have to learn to live with. The Choyong LC90 also has its share of problems. 

Being a shortwave radio guy, my tests started on the shortwave bands and I was immediately disappointed with its performance due to an amazing amount of birdies, that is signals generated within the receiver that appear all over the frequency range. But this was later fixed… how?...through an over-the-air update of the radio’s firmware. In fact, over the last few months, Choyong engineers have been able to add features like SSB, fix some bugs in the software and even remove all the birdies from the shortwave bands! 

Since this fix, I had a great time listening to international broadcast stations. The radio is very sensitive when using the telescopic antenna and it offers multiple bandwidth options. The added SSB capability has also been a good move but the LSB/USB tuning if flawed and is so difficult to tune that unless the station pitch for voice or music is perfect, you will never be able to tune correctly. The good news is that this problem can be fixed with a firmware update, but this has not happened yet. 

The radio has an external antenna connection. I added my MLA 30 loop to it and it did improve shortwave reception but it also did create a lot of overloading. It is already sensitive on the telescopic antenna, but it seems to have problems with antennas that bring it too many strong signals. I could hear WWCR over many other broadcasts that were weaker. 

Longwave and mediumwave

Unfortunately, the performance on the lower frequencies is not very good unless you add an outdoor antenna. The receiver lacks an internal ferrite loop. It relies on the telescopic antenna for those bands and this makes the performance rather poor. I did add my Tecsun AN 200 loop on the external antenna jack and it improved greatly. You can switch from internal to external antenna on those bands. 

Unless I have an external antenna, even local stations in Montreal have noise over them. In this respect, the radio will need improvements. An external antenna will be necessary to improve performance. I was unable to receive anything on longwave. 

Remarks by Choyong： In fact, the LC90 has a ferrite antenna inside, but its medium wave reception is indeed somewhat weak due to interference from the screen. Through a firmware upgrade, the current LC90 can now switch between "indoor mode" and "outdoor mode" during medium wave reception. Fortunately, when users are outdoors and use "outdoor mode" with the telescopic antenna extended, the LC90's MW reception is very good.

FM Performance

The FM radio is excellent. It gets some of my long-distance stations easily. WVPS in Vermont is clear with just 1 section of the telescopic antenna open. The audio on FM sounds great. The only thing I don’t understand is why there is no RDS. The beautiful display would be great to get all the Radio Data system information from stations. 

Remarks by Choyong：The 4.7 version which will be released in the end of year 2024 will add RDS functionality.

Internet radio

The radio connects to your Wi-Fi for its Smart Radio capabilities. It also automatically sets the clock depending on your time zone. If an update is needed, you can download it over the air without having to connect to a computer. 

No Wi-Fi? This is the first radio I have seen that can connect to a cell carrier for data using a SIM card. All you need is to add a data line, insert the SIM card, and you are good to go. 

Internet radio streaming works good and rarely cuts out when listening. On Sunday I spent all morning listening to the ABC Radio Australia. Propagation was poor one night, but no problem. The BBC World Service stream was coming in great. It’s a great feature to add to the radio and I found myself switching from SW to Internet Radio depending on what was on the air. 

The biggest problem comes with finding things. The radio has voice search that just does not work and the endless menus to run through will drive you mad. I have streamed mostly what was easy to find. Try to get a podcast or station…good luck!

The good news again is that all of this can be fixed with a firmware update. The latest version is 4.5. I hope that more will add and change features for the future. 

Battery life

One of the weird decisions of the company is to have batteries included that are behind a door that has a torque screw. The design team came back to me saying this was chosen so that users would not play inside the radio. Unfortunately, this is a drawback. When the batteries are dead you must wait for them to charge inside the radio. The included batteries are Li-ion 18650 and I have many of them with an external charger. That’s great as I was just able to swap batteries but this makes it more difficult. 

Battery life depends on your use of the Smart Radio functions. If you stay on Shortwave, the batteries give you a good day of radio listening but, as soon as you go to streaming, you will have just a few hours of use at most. 

Remarks by Choyong:Actually, I don't agree with Gill's statement that "as soon as you go to streaming, you will have just a few hours of use at most." After careful testing, we found that when using medium volume, the LC90 can play continuously for more than 15 hours.

Ergonomics

There are good things and bad things on this radio. One of the weird things is that the sockets to plug in external antenna, charging cable and earphones are on the same side and quite close to the tuning and volume controls.

One of the great features is the illuminated keypad. All buttons are well lit as soon as you press a button or turn a knob. The use of metal on the knobs makes the radio feel like it’s a high-end device. 

The screen is absolutely beautiful and one of the best I have seen on any radio. It can display a lot of information, even including album artwork when tuning in a music streaming service. 

The only fix needed on the display is that the information displayed is not always accurate. Bandwidth or meter band indications might be wrong and to fix it you need to retune or change the option. Then it’s fine.

Should you have a problem with the radio in any way, just hold the red power button for several seconds and radio will restart. Just like a computer, turn it off and turn it on again and things will be back to normal. 

Remarks by Choyong:The bug with incorrect display data for bandwidth and meter band has been fixed, thanks to Gill's reminder.

Conclusion

This is the first time a company has made what I like to call a radio that does it all. It certainly is technically challenging, and the many flaws have shown that you rarely get things right the first time. Choyong radios’CEO and designers have been in contact with me to learn more about what needs to be done to make this radio better. Already with my input they have fixed the birdies on shortwave and I hope more can be done. They were very open, having told me that my findings are indeed the problems they had noticed. 

They also have told me that they will have a follow-up in the making, the LC100. They will be sending me an advanced version to test before they release it to market. 

Although they do not mention it, it does receive the European longwave broadcast band. My guess is that they did not mention it as it was not great at receiving in that range. 

Mediumwave is 9 or 10 kHz spacing and goes from 520-1710 kHz 

Shortwave is general coverage 1711 – 29999 kHz. AM, USB and LSB 

FM coverage is 64 – 108 MHz