Radio Boy

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Now that the 400 PE comes with an AC adapter, (as the 500 always did), both have travel pouches, and are the same size, the choice is down to which suits you, and the fact you'll have to buy a secondhand 500, as opposed to a new 400.

Owning a couple of YB500's, as I do, and having read the many reviews of the 400, I hope the following helps.

On the reception side, the 400 wins, having a reputation for good sensitivity, which the 500 does not have such a high reputation for.

On the Audio quality side, the 500 wins, with a boostable output to 2 Watts on mains, 1W on quickly flattened batteries (it's better to use non boost mode on batteries, at 300 mW, to save battery power. On the mains, non boost mode produces 1W), the 400 gives only 700mW either way. Sound quality on the 500 is outstanding for the size of the radio. I must admit, I’ve never heard a 400, which attracts great comments for sound quality, but that extra power makes the 500 the winner for use out and about.

So it comes down to facilities, which I’ll split into what you get with one that you don’t get with the other. (i.e./ facilities I don’t mention are common to both or lacking in both.)

With the 400 you get selectable bandwidth, a local/DX switch, and an external antenna socket, all things aimed at better reception in difficult areas, reflecting the fact that the 400’s principal market was America, whereas the 500 was aimed at Europe. Of course, on the 500, you can always clip an external antenna to the telescopic antenna.

With the 500 you get 90 factory programmed frequencies for 9 major European broadcasters, (adding weight to the Europe/America split), RDS on FM, (again adding weight to the Europe/USA split, as RDS is in widespread use in Europe, relatively rare in America),  alphanumeric tagging of the memories, Fine tuning that works on AM as well as on SSB, a recorder activation jack, & a mono line output jack. You also get proper USB & LSB, rather than just a BFO, as you do with the 400, which means that SSB signals are much easier to tune and listen to on the 500. The 500 also gives 24 hours use from  4 AA batteries, as opposed to 20 hours from the 6 AA's needed by the 400.

Some may also consider the 500’s total European pedigree an advantage. Both sets were designed in Germany, but the 400 is built in China, whereas the 500 was built in the same factory in Portugal that gave us the majority of Satellit’s and a lot of other classic Grundig radios.

Both radios feature, among other things: 2 clocks, 2 timers and sleep facility, 40 user programmable memories, stereo headphone output, dial light, direct keying in of frequencies, up/down manual tuning & search/scan, tone switch, travel locks, SSB, and full alarm/snooze functions.