Despite growing up and living in a so-called "third world country" I kinda became a stereo child and a Walkman teen so I really like Sony radios, even having sometimes the chance to own one or two of them. One of these is a XDR-V1BTD which might be "old" now (your mileage may vary) but I really like it and want to share my thoughts on it for posterity sake since I haven't find much about this on the internet.

First of all, this one does not have DAB radio because, again, third world country. The only thing remotely similar to digital radio here is a few no-image channels in the DVB-T2 spectrum acting as "radio" so to listen to them you need to have a TV that can tune DVB-T2 (Colombia being the only weirdo that set its TV to use DVB-T2; the other countries in South America use the japanese ISDB-T standard; as of late, Sony won't ship Bravia TVs with internal DVB-T2 tuners here, so if you want to get a Sony TV to watch TV and listen to "digital" radio... import it from Europe or f you). So we are stuck with "old" radio - heard that the cost to migrate to something like DAB would be astronomical.

So with this background 90% of the time I use this radio is to listen to the local radio (a couple rock stations, the uni station, and some news and old music from AM sometimes). I've brought it up sometimes to camping or trekking too. Have used it as a bluetooth speaker like a couple of times and never with the audio output function. Have never used the NFC thing but I see why people would appreciate that it's there.

The thing has been with me for some time, around 2-3 years. Got it second hand and it was fairly expensive; several buttons were working at random, including the power button, so even turning it on or off was kind of a hit and miss thing. I guess the previous owner dropped it or something like that. Had it serviced and they managed to make everything work.

Things I like

The thing is absolutely great. I love its boxy form factor and that its chassis is made out of "wood" (MDF?) which gives it a unique character. The sound quality is top notch (at least for me, no audiophile whatsoever) and it has some kind of "surround but not 3D surround" quality, which fulls the room with its sound, even at a low volume, and you can't tell easily where the sound it's coming from.

I love that the screen is a backlight full dot-matrix (the light is bright enough to light my room when it's completely dark, and ith has three levels of brightness which is really great) and the wake up/alarm functions are a great thing to have. It's great that the light screen button has a bit of raised surface (unlike the other buttons) so it's easy to find it in the dark.

The preset buttons are a nice addition to it. The preset button #3 has a little raised button (sort of like the 'f' and the 'j' on desktop keyboards) so you can find it with your touch and locate the others with other fingers of your hand. The power button has some ("radial") texture on it so it also is easily identifiable with your touch. Same thing with the big "change station" dial.

Battery life is also great too. I have never ran into the situation where it goes completely blank. I wish something like this had existed when I was a kid, in the 90s, when if you had a "portable" radio the only option was A batteries that ran out fairly quickly - and even more if you listened to FM radio.

Overall I find the thing of great quality, sturdy and elegant.

Things I don't like

First and foremost, the 'dial' wheel - Not that I don't like it by itself, but that its function is to change stations. With a set of buttons for preset stations, I find it kinda odd that it seems the main purpose of the radio is to change stations - it would make more sense to me if that wheel were for turning volume up or down. Sometimes when I'm trying to press the volume buttons I move that dial accidentally with other part of my hand, thus changing the station in the process, which is a bit annoying.

Also, this may be completely just me, but I don't like that the 'idle' screen uses a big font for the clock numbers, and when it's turned on the radio uses another font, with small numbers, almost unreadable from more than 50 cm away. Which brings me to the

Things I wish

I'd like if those two fonts were one and the same size, and a different font of any of these two - I love the numbers font that came up with the Wahoo Element 2 series, they're tall and stylish and I imagine they would look amazing in that dot matrix screen. I wish there were a way to change that or, if it exists, I wouldn't know how to make it happen (I guess some low-level chip programming has to be involved).

Sadly, as mentioned at the beginning, DAB radio is not a thing here and probably never will, so it's not possible to auto-adjust the clock. It would be a nice thing to have. And it would be great if it was rechargeable via USB-C - the wall adaptor throws 5.8V to it so also am not sure if it's doable.

As mentioned before, I wish the big wheel 'button' were for controling the volume. Or at least that it had another dial like that to change the volume. Volume buttons are rather small in comparison (long, but thin) so sometimes it's hard to change the volume. It'd be great if it had a 'mute' button.

Also another "maybe it's just me" but I wish it had USB/SD/Micro SD slots where you could plug your card or USB thumb with MP3 (or OGG, FLAC, what have you) and play them on the thing and control the playback with both the buttons and the dial on the device and via bluetooth. It'd be amazing but also am not sure if there is a way to "hack" it to add to it that ability. I wish Sony launched a new revision of these things with such feature but alas regarding to radios, Walkmans and the like they seem to like to launch unique batches of devices.