Also known as: Scorpion II, NSP101WXGR, Eton Scorpion 2
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The Eton Scorpion II is the emergency radio built to leave the house: IPX4 splashproof — the best formal water rating in the current crank class — rubberized armor, an aluminum carabiner, even a bottle opener, wrapped around a digitally tuned AM/FM/NOAA weather receiver with crank and solar charging for around $50.1 The trade is the smallest battery in the roster (800 mAh), and like all of its class it does no SAME decoding and has no shortwave.
Key takeaways Buy it for ruggedness, not runtime. IPX4 plus armor makes it the one crank radio genuinely at home clipped to a pack in the rain. The 800 mAh cell is the catch: hours of listening, near-useless phone charging, and only a few minutes of radio per minute of cranking — charge it before every trip. Weather alerts are the tone type, not SAME — a plugged-in SAME desktop radio still owns the wake-you-up job at home. ~$50 new, ~$35 renewed; sold at Lowe’s and Home Depot, not just Amazon. Listening is license-free — no FCC anything, ever. Ranked in best emergency radios.
Overview
Most crank radios are shelf furniture; the Scorpion II (Eton model NSP101WXGR) is trail gear. The rubberized exoskeleton and IPX4 rating — protected against splashing water from any direction — make it the only unit in the current roster with real outdoor credentials, and the aluminum carabiner means it actually attaches to a pack instead of rattling in a pocket. Digital tuning covers AM, FM, and the NOAA weather band; a 0.5 W LED flashlight handles camp chores. Power comes from the hand crank, a built-in solar strip, and an internal 800 mAh Li-ion charged over Micro-USB — no USB-C. It’s widely stocked at Lowe’s, Home Depot, and DX Engineering as well as Amazon, where renewed units run about $35.2
Reviewers’ consistent knock is the small, tinny speaker — physics, given the sealed rugged shell — and the battery below.
The 800 mAh trade
The Scorpion II’s cell is the smallest in the current crank-radio field: a third of a Midland ER310’s, a fifth of a RunningSnail MD-092’s. In practice that means hours of listening rather than days, phone charging that’s strictly an emergency dribble, and no AA fallback to lean on. The crank yields a few minutes of listening per minute of effort (no independent measured figure exists for this model; the whole class behaves this way), and the small solar strip is a maintainer. The discipline is simple: top it up via USB before every trip, and treat crank and sun as the reserve. If your radio lives on a shelf instead of a pack strap, nearly everything else in the roster out-runs it — but none of them takes weather like this one.
Alerting: tone alerts, not SAME
The Scorpion II receives NOAA weather-band alerts of the 1050 Hz tone variety — not SAME. No crank radio in this class decodes the digital county codes that let a radio alarm only for your county; that job belongs to a plugged-in SAME desktop unit at home. On the trail, the honest workflow is checking the forecast loop on the weather band at camp — which the Scorpion II’s digital tuner makes quick — rather than expecting it to interrupt you.
GopherTrunk alternative
An SDR needs a computer and power; a radio you clip to a backpack needs neither — so GopherTrunk is no substitute for a Scorpion II. It’s the home-side complement: a $30 RTL-SDR running free GopherTrunk monitors and records your local public-safety, utility, and weather channels while the grid is up — the traffic that tells you what’s really happening in an event. Our emergency scanner frequencies guide covers what to program; the Scorpion II is the take-it-with-you fallback for when you’re out of range of all that.
Who it’s for
- Buy the Scorpion II if your emergency radio rides on a pack, a boat, or a job site — anywhere the IPX4 shell earns its keep. View on Amazon →
- Buy the Sangean MMR-88 instead for a better receiver and IPX3 in a house-first radio, or the Midland ER310 for triple the battery plus AA fallback.
- On a tight budget? The FosPower A1 and RunningSnail MD-092 cost less and store more — with none of the ruggedness. Full rankings: best emergency radios.
Sources
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Eton Scorpion II — Lowe’s — retail listing: rugged multi-powered design, band coverage, flashlight, and current availability in big-box distribution. ↩
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Eton NSP101WXGR Scorpion II — DX Engineering — specifications: IPX4 splashproof rating, crank/solar/USB power, 800 mAh battery, carabiner and bottle-opener hardware. ↩
Frequently asked questions
Is the Eton Scorpion II waterproof?
It’s IPX4 splashproof — the best formal water rating in the current crank-radio class — with rubberized armor around the body. That means it shrugs off rain and spray from any direction; it is not submersible.
Does the Eton Scorpion II have SAME alerting?
No. It receives NOAA weather-band alerts but does not decode SAME county codes — no crank radio in this class does. For county-filtered alerts that can wake you, add a plugged-in SAME desktop radio at home.
How long does the Scorpion II's battery last?
The 800 mAh cell is the smallest in the current roster — hours of listening, not days, and phone charging from it is strictly an emergency dribble. It’s built for clip-to-a-pack ruggedness, not runtime; charge it before every trip.
Can the Scorpion II charge my phone?
Barely. The USB-A output works, but with 800 mAh behind it you’d add a few percent to a modern phone. If power-bank duty matters, the RunningSnail MD-092’s 4000 mAh or Midland ER310’s 2600 mAh serve that job far better.
Does the Eton Scorpion II receive shortwave?
No — digital-tuned AM, FM, and NOAA weather only. For a crank radio with shortwave, the Kaito KA500 is the current option; either way, listening is license-free everywhere in the US.