Radio Boy

Ocean Boy 510 review

The Ocean Boy 510 is a PLL synthesizer, 3 band portable radio, launched onto the market in 1999. The 510 replaced the 500, which was a similar radio in a different style case. The 500 lacked Radiotext, but did have SW, which the 510 doesn't have. The 500 had replaced the 400, which shared the styling, but omitted RDS. The OB510 was replced in around 2004 by the Concert Boy 80, which has much the same facilities, but adds SW.

Reception.

On FM, reception is pretty good, probably slightly above average for a radio in this budget class. It’s hopelessly outclassed by radios likes Satellit 400/500/700, but it is only about a 5th of their new price.

On AM, again, a fair performance, slightly better than comparably priced radios.

Overall, a good performer in this price category, (about £60). A Local/DX switch is included, though only for FM.

Audio.

Grundig radios usually excel in this category, and this radio doesn’t disappoint. The speaker is 100mm, about four inches, in diameter, and is fed by a 750mW amplifier, both of these statistics being better than average for contemporaries in this price class. It’s closest rival, the Roberts R9929, which also has the same RDS facilities, is £10 dearer, and though it has Bass & Treble tone controls, it has a smaller speaker, so I'd guess the bass will be less obvious anyway. The tone control on the Ocean Boy is a treble cut thumbwheel, and is excellent, enabling you to get a particularly good sound on FM. In fact, I was surprised at how good it was. 750mW doesn’t sound like it will be particularly loud, but distortion is very low, so you can run the radio at near flat-out levels, and it still sounds good.

Plugging headphones into the stereo-wired-for-mono headphone socket reveals less than Hi-Fi performance, but this is hardly surprising at this price level. That said, it’s still very good, just a little lacking in very low bass. Unfortunately, the socket is at headphone level, so it cannot be used to drive an external speaker.

Ergonomics.

The LCD display is perfect! With large, clear main characters and excellent contrast at all angles, even the smaller function flags are easy to read. Illumination, activated by pushing any button on the front, stays on for only 8 seconds, except when using the radiotext function, when it remains on until the function is turned off again. The lighting, which appears to be a green LED, is excellent, the display being easy to read when lit by this lamp only. The lighting cannot be run continually while externally powered, except if radiotext is selected, as mentioned before.

The time and day displays when the radio is switched off, but has to be called up when in use, as the same part of the display is used for frequency/RDS name display. When you select time to display, it remains displayed until you select frequency/RDS name again. Alarm flags display when the alarm is set, and for which option, radio or buzzer. No battery low indicator exists. 4 C batteries run the radio, and 2 AAA batteries maintain the memories and other settings. The radio must be powered and switched on when changing the memory batteries. Failure to do this means that the memories and clock settings will be lost, as no internal temporary backup is provided. This is not explained in the instruction book.

The front panel controls are attractively styled, surrounding the display in a semi-circle. Upon first seeing the radio, you expect it to take some getting used to, but in fact, it’s soon second nature, and very intuitive. The buttons have a nice, tactile feel, and crisp action. The thumbwheel volume and tone controls are located on the left side, with the headphone socket, and are easy to use. Sockets are limited to headphones and the rear-mounted AC-in, which is 240 volt only, so could not be used in North America.

On the right side are the Local/DX switch, and the mechanical 3-waveband slider switch, which has a nice crisp & easy action, much better than the cheaper and smaller Ocean Boy 330/340/350’s.

No rear tilt-stand is fitted. The aerial is held by a friction joint, not the detent type, so it stays put in the best position it can be placed in. It isn’t a heavy aerial anyway. Unusually, it is secured in it's stowed position by a plastic shroud mounted on the lowest section. This has a magnet in it, that locks onto a magnet in the case top. The whole arrangement looks like a handle when first stowed, and will no doubt be mistaken for one by many owners on first taking it out of the box. Unlike many modern “portables” which do lack a handle or strap however, the OB510 does actually have a handle! It too is slightly unusual, being a spring loaded flap labelled “Grip Extension” on the right hand side of the rear panel, which opens out when required allowing the set to be carried sideways, and when the handle is released again, the spring returns it to it’s retracted position.

Facilities.

Firstly, I must mention again that SW has been dropped on this model, the first time an Ocean Boy has omitted it, in a broken 40+ year’s run of Ocean Boy production. Admittedly, the other PLL Ocean Boys have only had 5.9-15.5MHz, but that was useful coverage. I’d have preferred to have lost LW! For the price, the memory facility is quite good, 10 programmable slots for each of the 3 wavebands, but again, LW is an annoying inclusion here, as there probably aren’t 10 stations on LW! Last station memory exists, but once you use a pre-set, you cannot recall the last manually tuned station, as no button exists to call it. You have to retune, if you can remember what it was! Or you could keep one preset free to use for retaining the last manually tuned station, but some self-discipline would be required to use it every time. Tuning options are merely up/down keys, which also activate auto-search on all wavebands if held for about half a second. MW steps are fixed at 9kHz, making it unusable on MW in America. LW is unusable in America, and most American FM broadcasters do not use the extensive RDS facilities, so this radio is very much a Europe aimed product.

FM-RDS is the forte of this radio, and there are no practical RDS functions provided on other portable radios that aren’t offered here. In fact, it was the first radio to provide all of them together, despite some other manufacturer’s claims! Roberts claimed their R9906 PLL digital three band receiver was “the first and only portable radio in the market to feature a scrolling text panel”, according to the press release issued on behalf of Roberts Radio in early 2000. This despite the fact that the OB510 was available in 1999! The R9906 has since been replaced by the R9929 mentioned earlier. The usual PS name (the 8 character station name) and Alternate Frequency, (allowing stronger frequencies for the station you have selected to be found by the radio at the push of a button) are joined by 4 other important features of the RDS data stream:

1/ Road traffic announcements can be automatically picked up by the radio, and the volume will be increased automatically if required, so even if you don’t want to listen to the radio, if you leave it on with the volume turned down, and tuned to a Traffic Announcement station, when traffic news is activated, the radio will turn up the volume, announce the problems, and turn the volume down again when they're finished. In addition, EON allows announcements on other stations that are linked to the selected station to be received. The radio knows all the frequencies that are part of the EON for the selected station. In practice, there is a small problem, in that the tuned-in station may tell the radio to tune to a linked station for traffic news, but when the radio gets to that frequency, it may be one from the far side of the selected station's coverage area, and thus be so weak that it cannot be received legibly. In this case, the radio will revert to the original signal. Fortunately, the option can be disabled, either just for the announcement in progress, or completely.

2/ Clock Time allows the radio to set its own clock with the day and time on first setting up, and subsequently reset the clock every time an RDS station is used, providing the station supports the CT feature, Not all do! Effectively, this means the clock should always be correct, assuming the broadcasters keep their time signal accurate. If this proves to be a problem, because the station you use is not maintaining their clock correctly, you can disable the function, and set the time manually, or tune to an accurate station, let it set the time (this takes less than 1 minute) and then disable the feature before retuning to the inaccurate station. Note also that receiving RDS stations from another time zone (eg/ Mainland Europe from the south coast of England, or vice versa) can result in your clock being one hour out if you haven't disabled the auto-set feature.

3/ Radio text allows you to receive and display a 64-character message from the broadcaster. This may be information about upcoming programmes, the current programme, or the title and artist of the current song being played. According to a friend who bought an OB510 in Germany recently, and brought it home, the text service of German stations was much more comprehensive than that provided by the BBC once he got it home. I guess the BBC “once” set the standard by which the world was measured! When the text facility is used, the display illuminates permanently, until it is switched off again. Annoyingly, when you select Text, it starts every time with the phrase “radio text” which seems pointless! On the plus side, the characters are large and easy to read from several feet away, and the numbers “1” and “5” are displayed differently from the letters “I” and “S”, for easy distinction. The display can also show the “@” for e-mail addresses, but not the dot for website addresses. If the scrolling text isn’t moving fast enough for you, holding the text button down speeds it up!

Here's a video of the Ocean Boy 510 receiving Radiotext at the end of BBC Radio 4's "Just a minute" programme, as it's about to lead into the "Food Programme"

4/ The Programme Type, as determined by the code transmitted by the broadcaster, can be displayed, and you can also choose a programme type and search for it. However, while there are actually 31 Programme Type codes, this radio will only search for the first 16 of them individually, because only 15 of those have been defined as actively displayed, the other 15 have all been bundled together under the "no type" label. However, the radio will find these 15, if you follow the recommendation in my Hints and Tips page.

Additional RDS information

While the Satellit 700 and YB500 will, in test mode (which is not documented in the users manual), display the actual PTY code, TA & TP flags, PI code, Music/Speech indicator, and RDS quality, they won’t use them for any practical purpose to most people. The PI code can be useful to FM-Dxer’s, to confirm what station was received. (It is likely the OB510 can display this sort of information, it’s a question of knowing how to do it!) It has to be remembered though, that the Satellit 700/YB500 were both introduced during the very early days of RDS, (Indeed, the Satellit 700 was the world's first RDS equipped portable radio). They also have advantages like stereo, and in the Satellit 700, vastly superior sensitivity and selectivity to most FM equipped radios. They also have the ability to store the PS name in the memory, something the OB510 cannot do. So, it’s a case of horses for courses! The Satellit 700 definitely has more practical advantage as an FM receiver for the enthusiast, but the OB510 has great practical use for the more casual listener. The best solution is, of course, have both!

Timer facilities are good for the price, a 10-90 minute sleep timer is joined by a single, fixed 90 minute switch-on timer, Timer setting is slightly fiddly, with no direct entry facility. Instead, it involves scrolling through the hours and minutes using the up/down keys, but in a simpler way than the smaller Ocean Boys. Unlike them, however, the timer cannot be used to change stations while you are listening to one station, in order to avoid missing a favourite programme on another. This is because you cannot assign presets to the alarm on this model. However, you do have the choice of radio or buzzer, and a snooze facility.

A function lock switch is fitted on the underside, to stop accidental mistuning, and to lock the set off while in transit.

Sum-up.

At about £60, equivalent to about $90 US/90 Euro’s, this is an excellent choice for someone wanting to utilise RDS to the full while in the home. Reception is good, audio is excellent, and to cap it all, it looks dearer than it is, with a smart, tasteful front, graceful curves (there isn’t a flat panel on this model!) and an expensive, and remarkably clear LCD display.

Footnote:

Although there are two versions of this radio, dark metallic brown with a black speaker grille, or chrome effect with a silver grille, only the brown/black version is available in the UK.