Midland WR120B review

What the WR120B is and who it suits

The WR120B is a tabletop receiver for National Weather Service broadcasts. Midland says it uses S.A.M.E. technology to give localized alerts for your specific county. In the box are the radio, an AC power adapter and the manual. It is meant to sit by the bed and sound when a warning covers your area.

Midland's page lists wall power with AA batteries as the backup, and mentions no crank, solar panel or phone charging, so this is a home radio rather than a go-bag one. For a portable unit, see the ER310PRO review and our weather radio comparison.

Setting up county alerts

Out of the box, Midland's manual says the radio is preprogrammed to receive alerts for all S.A.M.E. codes within range of the transmitter on the selected channel. Until you enter your county, it will respond to alerts for every area that transmitter covers.

Setup is a short menu routine: language, then country, state and county, with the manual pointing you to the National Weather Service to look up your code. You can store up to 25 location codes. Midland says to choose WHOLE COUNTY unless partial-county alerting is supported where you live and you know the right partition. Seven weather channels are preset. If the radio misbehaves, the manual says to check that the station on your selected channel is broadcasting and issues alerts for your code.

What an alert does

You choose how the radio responds. Voice plays an alert tone for eight seconds and then the live broadcast, tone sounds for up to three minutes, and display scrolls text with no audible alarm. Midland's page cites a 90 dB siren, and the manual gives low, medium and high alert volume settings. Three color-coded lights mark warning, watch and advisory levels.

Midland says it monitors NOAA for weather, biological and civil emergencies; its page gives the count as 85+ alert types in one place and over 60 in another. You can turn individual events on or off, though Midland says warnings such as tornado and hurricane warnings stay on and cannot be disabled. Pressing Weather/Snooze stops the tones and plays the broadcast. One caution: the manual says moving the ON/OFF switch to OFF disables weather radio functions completely, including receiving alerts, so it is not just a mute button.

Running it in a power outage

The WR120B runs from its AC adapter, with three AA batteries as emergency backup. Midland does not include them, and its troubleshooting table says to make sure batteries are installed in case of a power failure. The spec table on the Amazon listing says six AAA, but the listing's own description agrees with Midland on three AA, so go with the maker.

Midland's documents give no battery runtime figure, so keep spare cells and use the built-in alert test, which plays the siren for a Warning with your current settings. Reception is the other variable: Midland says to extend the antenna fully, stay near a window if you are in a metal structure, and that a weak-signal area may need an external antenna. Our power outage checklist covers the rest of the plan.

Living with it

Amazon lists the radio at about 2 by 5.3 by 6.1 inches, small enough for a nightstand. It has a clock with an alarm, a menu in English, Spanish or French, and a backlight you can set to normal (on for five seconds after a button press), always on or off. Midland also describes it as Public Alert certified.

How it compares and who should skip it

For waking a household to a local warning, a county-coded plug-in radio is the straightforward choice, and our weather radio comparison shows the alternatives side by side. Midland's ER310PRO adds a crank, solar panel and phone charging, but neither its page nor its manual mentions county codes. One option is to keep both: this one at the bedside, a portable one in the kit.

Skip the WR120B if you want a single radio you can carry out of the house, or if no NOAA transmitter signal reaches your home.

What does S.A.M.E. coding do on the WR120B?

You program the radio with the code for your county, or up to 25 codes, and it responds to alerts that include them. Midland's manual says that before you program anything it responds to every code its transmitter sends. The manual points you to the National Weather Service to look up codes.

Will the WR120B work during a power outage?

Midland says it keeps running from three AA batteries, which are not in the box. Install them when you set the radio up, and run the alert test now and then so you know the siren and settings behave the way you expect.

How do I stop an alert from sounding?

Press Weather/Snooze to silence the tones and listen to the broadcast, or press any other button to acknowledge the alert, which stops the tones and returns the radio to normal. Avoid using the ON/OFF switch as a mute, since OFF also stops the radio receiving alerts.

Can I take the WR120B camping or charge a phone with it?

Midland lists AC and AA battery power only, with no hand crank, solar panel or USB charging. For a portable radio that can charge a phone, look at a crank radio such as the ER310PRO, reviewed on its own page.