I'm not real impressed with Lextronix, the firm building the lower-end Grundigs these days. Their designs are not well thought-out, and they are poorly executed (but other than that...). Grundig then gives these miserable radios great cosmetics and they sell. But Grundig needs to get Lextronics on the ball or they run the very real risk of alienating a whole generation of shortwave listeners.
So, I should excuse myself from writing this review. Take it with a grain of salt therefore.
These two radios, while intended to do the same job, are very different concepts. One uses mass produced parts and circuits to provide operation independent of batteries and outlets, the other uses a unique mechanism. For the Grundig is powered by batteries that are rechargeable with the built in generator, while the BayGen operates off the generator more directly; the spring motor is running the whole time the radio is on.
There are other differences. The BayGen is rather more carefully designed, made, and aligned. It lacks a light. It costs more.
But similarities are also abundant. Both radios have approximately the same frequency coverage. Both have analog tuners. Both can hear middling difficult catches such as Tunisia, Australia, and Kuwait. And, refreshingly, both use "bandset-bandspread" tuning, a must with analog radios tuning the higher frequencies.
No, this isn't the part about buying a BayGen to save the planet. That's between you and your conscience. This is the part about sensitivity, which is very much the same between the two; selectivity, which is superior on the BayGen; and spurious response, which is very much superior on the BayGen.
In fact, spurs are endemic to Lextronics products, and this one is no exception. They are especially prevalent in the lower end of the AM dial, but crop up elsewhere, all the way through 16m, the shortest wave on this set.
Now, to be fair, such problems are rampant in the global electronics manufacturing biz. The opinion that no one in America ever uses AM anyway, the presence of the 10.7 mHz FM intermediate frequency circuitry, the use of untrained (and barely compensated) labor, and the lack of time to build, test, and improve, all add up to miserable weak signal AM performance in almost every inexpensive radio made today, and inferior performance in even high end radios. But Lextronix seems to have particular problems with these issues. My Emergency Radio has a big fat spur on 650, so I can't use it to hear WSM!
The Freeplay, on the other hand, has one of the best AM tuners I've used in a long time. There are a few spurs, but they are all suppressed enough to be more or less unobjectionable. It's more the difference in alignment, I think, than anything else; and Lextronix should take note.
However, the Freeplay does have a little problem with generator noise. It is always there in the background, never objectionable, a rhythmic click with (on some bands) a barely audible hissing.
Doesn't matter. For working weak ones, I'll take a little noise over unsuppressed spurs every time. And since the Freeplay foundation is placing these radios in the REAL fringe areas, that's good.
Although the bandspread control on both radios is very useful, it has a lot of backlash, about 15 kHz on 16m in each case. At least neither of them suffers from the kind of backlash my Grundig 960s have; on the lower end of the dial, the 960's tuner goes the same direction for about 15 kHz when you reverse knob direction! 15 kHz of straight backlash is easy to tune after that...
In fact, the dial stringing of both radios feels fragile, and is cause for concern. I hope the BayGen people have left the dial string easily accessible. I don't have any reason to anticipate Grundig did, but I'll probably find out for certain in about seven to fifteen years.
Both of these radios do a good job, with the edge going to the Freeplay; you'll have to decide for yourself whether the increased performance is worth the price/karma difference.