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Review of the Coby HDR-650 HD Tuner
The pros, cons, and comments of the Coby HDR-650 HD tuner. The reviews and ratings data is consolidated from multiple reviews and sources.
Pros: Easy to set up. Very price competitive. Good reception of HD stations, and reviews indicate the digital radio signal sounds crystal clear.
Cons: Some of the controls are not in the best place on the Coby.
Comments : A very good HD radio tuner for the price! The Coby HDR-650 HD Tuner will add reception of HD digital radio to any home audio system.
Setting Up
The setup of this Coby tuner was very easy. It is very compact and can fit on almost any shelf of your audio system. It can even be set up sideways alongside a large component. The long wire for the FM digital radio signal can be easily taped up out of sight behind your shelves - a horizontal placement probably being the best. Since all the function button on the Colby HDR 650 are on the top of the unit, you may not want to set it up on a shelf with tight vertical clearance.
Comparison to Analog Reception
That FM stations will be first tuned in an analog mode, and then after a few seconds they will automatically lock onto the digital HD signal and then display the “HD” on the right side of the display, after the frequency of the station. There are several controls and buttons on the remote control that are not present on the actual tuner: Seek, Alarm, Menu, Sleep, Snooze, the ten available station presets (which are very useful because there is no rotatable knob to go up and down the dial), and the volume down and up. The HD multicast channels will also appear on the HD tuner display thus: FM 105.9-1 HD and FM 105.9-2 HD.
When the Coby tuner automatically locked onto the HD signal, my review shows that there was a noticeable upgrade in audio clarity and lower noise. As an example, all-jazz and all-classical stations provided greater clarity on some of the instruments or sections of the orchestra. Remember that HD Radio is similar to DTV in that you either get the signal or you don’t. If there is not sufficient signal strength, it will simply mute rather than provide a noisy or distorted signal. Reviews show that you will get a much better radio reception of distant HD stations if you attach a quality indoor FM antenna or better yet an outdoor antenna to the unit’s antenna input.
Summing Up
A high quality tuner. Pleased with the reception and quality. A very competitive price that should help expand the number of HD Radio listeners.
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