Massive Battery Upgrade Meets Modern Connectivity: Midland ER310PRO Emergency Weather Radio Review

Growing up in Hurricane Alley in North Carolina, I’ve heard the emergency alert warning tone crackle to life on a weather radio more times than I could count.

Midland has always been my weather radio of choice, but I always gravitated toward the simpler models. When my editor dangled the prospect of reviewing the new Midland ER310PRO Emergency Weather Radio ($100), which launched this November, I was wary.

The company tacked “Pro” onto the end of the existing ER310’s name. And it didn’t look all that different. My skepticism hardened even before it arrived on my doorstep. Would it just be a slight tweak that barely even necessitated a name change?

Having played around with it over the past week, I now need to swallow my words, along with some humble pie, my least favorite kind of pie. The ER310PRO makes some major improvements over the ER310, enough that I’d say it’s worth upgrading to the Pro, even if you already own the ER310.

In short: The Midland ER310PRO Emergency Weather Radio ($100) improves upon the ER310 in meaningful ways, some of which are boasted about proudly by Midland and others that don’t receive top billing on the marketing materials. I’ve usually turned up my nose at all-in-one weather radios such as this, but going hands-on has turned me into a believer. I’ve lived through more hurricanes and floods than I can count, and this is the weather radio I’d want with me for another.

Looking for a new emergency radio? Check out GearJunkie’s Best Emergency Radios Buyer’s Guide for more options.

Midland ER310PRO Emergency Weather Radio: Review

Call me a skeptic when it comes to jack-of-all-trades equipment. If it isn’t a multitool, I generally raise an eyebrow if it tries to do more than three things. I raise two eyebrows if, whatever it is, there’s a flashlight built into it.

The flashlight on the ER310PRO utilizes high-quality Cree LEDs. Midland didn’t provide a lumen count for the ER310PRO on its pre-release materials, nor its user manual, but the regular ER310 also has a Cree flashlight that can put out 130 lumens on its top setting. Given that much of the ER310 is carried over to the ER310PRO, I suspect it’s the same flashlight.

Whatever its rating, I found it plenty bright enough to navigate pitch-black rooms. There’s an SOS strobe and ultrasonic dog whistle built into the Midland, too. If only I had a dog with which to test it. I did briefly consider turning it out outside to see how many of Brooklyn’s stray dogs would come running, but then decided that I didn’t want to die in a way that would get covered by the New York Post.

The handle works as well for holding the flashlight level as it does for carrying the radio across the room. That surprised me. Looking at the radio, it seemed to have the ergonomics of a shoebox. It was not only usable but also comfortable when used as a flashlight.

Midland includes a removable nylon strap lanyard with a metal D-ring on the end, from which you can hang the radio from a wall hook or carabiner. It loops through a slot in the handle and fastens to itself with Velcro. Am I comfortable with hanging a roughly 24-ounce radio from a Velcro strap? No, but it also held firm every time I strung it up, so it stayed put and sturdy during actual usage.

Radio Reception Coming in Clear

Weather radios allow you to listen to the seven channels that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) uses to broadcast weather-related news. This is where you’ll hear the most urgent and important communications about imminent and ongoing major weather events and natural disasters.

Even though I’ve long considered the Midland WR120 ($45) my emergency weather radio of choice, one major drawback has left me passively searching for a replacement for years. Its barebones nature wasn’t a drawback for me. If anything, it was a virtue. But I couldn’t forgive its lack of AM/FM reception.

The ER310PRO’s retractable antenna measures 16 inches when fully extended. My pre-WWII apartment building is made of brick and has some of the thickest wallboard I’ve ever encountered in a home, but I was still able to get decent reception.

Midland says it’ll receive NOAA weather channel broadcasts from up to 50 miles away. It’s an analog radio, after all, so you might have to move around your place and experiment with angling it for the best reception.

One of the major new features the ER310PRO has is a built-in Bluetooth connection that allows you to connect your phone to stream music, podcasts, or radio stations to it. It’s a fine touch, and one that Midland seems particularly proud of, but in an emergency, I just don’t care about playing downloaded music from my phone to my radio.

I could see the value of it as a way to pass the time once the preparations have been completed and you’re trying to kill time, but even then, I’d caution conserving the radio’s and phone’s batteries for truly necessary use.

The Midland’s built-in speaker isn’t going to make your audiophile Bluetooth speakers jealous, but it sounds decent enough. Matchbox Twenty’s “3 AM” came in clear and crisp the first time I flicked on the radio and navigated to a suitable FM frequency. It’s worlds better than the cheap, tinny-sounding $10 radios I’ve bought off Amazon.

An Extended Runtime

More than any improvement the Pro makes over the regular ER310, it’s the internal rechargeable battery that steals the show. The ER310 has a 2,600mAh internal battery, good for, according to Midland, 45 hours of listening. The ER310PRO blows it out of the water by packing a 10,000mAh internal battery into the same roughly 8- by 3.5- by 2.5-inch case.

Midland states that at a full charge, the ER310PRO can broadcast for over 200 hours, depending on the volume setting, as higher volumes draw the battery down more quickly. I don’t have quite that much free time on my hands, so I’ll have to take Midland’s word for it.

The way the ER310PRO can hold a battery four times higher in capacity without enlarging the radio case, I presume, is because the Pro loses the ability to use removable batteries as a backup power source. The regular ER310 can hold six AA batteries in case the internal battery runs out of juice.

I think Midland made the right call to ditch the removable battery backup. The ER310PRO doesn’t need it, not when there’s a hand crank and a built-in solar panel to charge the radio’s internal battery in case you deplete it and can’t recharge it through a wall outlet.

The hand crank is easy to turn. Even young children would be able to turn it easily, although the idea of forcing your kids to generate electricity for you has an uncomfortably Dickensian whiff of “Industrial Revolution villain.” Turning the crank for a minute provides 9 minutes of radio use. Midland’s user manual states that 1 hour of solar charging in “optimal sunlight conditions,” which means direct sunlight, provides up to 45 minutes of radio use time.

There’s a battery meter on the LCD screen that tells you how much charge remains in the internal battery, but it’s nearly useless. The meter consists of three bars within a small icon. How much charge does one bar represent? If there are three bars, does that mean it’s 95% full or 80% full? Who knows? It’s one of the few weaknesses of the ER310PRO.

Recharging Other Devices

You can also charge personal electronics from the ER310PRO. Plug your device into the same USB-C port (next to the headphone jack and the on/off switch) that you use to charge the radio itself, and it’ll begin charging the connected device from its internal battery, just as if it were a power bank.

You should still keep a separate power bank around the house for emergencies, since you don’t want to rely entirely upon sapping your emergency weather radio to charge your phone. But it’s a great feature as a backup if your main power bank is depleted, broken, or lost.

The ER310PRO’s user manual says that its 10,000mAh internal battery holds enough juice to fully charge an iPhone 14 three times. Regardless of whether you’re still rocking a 3-year-old iPhone, that’s roughly representative of most modern smartphones. As long as it charges via a USB-C cable, you can recharge it from the Midland.

Even though there are half as many buttons on the Pro and more functions baked into the radio, it remains easy to cycle through the settings. Those fewer buttons are a blessing, too. The regular ER310’s six buttons make the control panel too busy for my liking. There’s also a multifunction button on top of the Midland that controls the flashlight, SOS strobe, and ultrasonic dog whistle.

Despite the sealed rubber buttons and the rubber plug that fits into place over the connection ports, which suggest water resistance, Midland chose not to have the ER310PRO IP-rated. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily not able to withstand dust or water exposure. It just means that it hasn’t been tested to a specific standard and proven that it could withstand it.

I’d keep it out of the rain, even a light mist. Unless a piece of electronic gear has explicit guarantees from its manufacturer about being able to survive dusty environments or water exposure, keep it dry and clean.

Midland ER310PRO Radio: Conclusion

The Midland ER310PRO manages to, at least partially, disprove the adage that something can be a jack of all trades but a master of none. It works well as a weather radio, sure. It also works exceptionally well as a power bank, with its enormous 10,000mAh internal rechargeable battery, decently crisp speaker, solar charger, easy-to-turn hand crank, AM/FM radio, and flashlight.

Even if you don’t use every feature, the ER310PRO has enough of them that I’d recommend this to anyone who simply wants a good emergency radio. Who cares if you just use the (figurative) bells and not the whistles? The core of the Midland ER310PRO is that it’s the best model to date from the biggest name in weather radios, and that should be enough to win over anyone who wants to prepare their household for the next natural disaster or power outage. Even skeptics. Even me.