It's the perfect time of year to buy a cheap backyard radio, and there's nothing cuter, more feature-packed, or more affordable than this one.

Majority presents its compact Mini Shelford
It is a DAB+ and FM radio, which also works as a Bluetooth speaker.
There’s also a headphone jack, a sleep timer, and an alarm.

Despite the recent death of longwave, there’s a lot to be said for listening to the radio, so you can tune into sports broadcasts or watch the news when there’s no mobile signal to speak of.

And now Majority has a new option, one that’s small and adorable, as well as charming and cheap. This is Mini Shelford (not to be confused with Great Shelford, a village just outside Cambridge, UK).

Costing just £49 (around $65, AU$100), the Mini Shelford will go on sale in August. It’s a smaller version of another Majority radio, called Little Shelford, with many of the same features but in an even smaller size.

Full of features

As you can imagine, the Mini Shelford allows you to listen to DAB+ and FM radio. So you could still have enjoyed the Wimbledon final if you were in a dark signal spot (not that I’m speaking from experience or anything).

But the Shelford also works as a Bluetooth speaker: pairing a device allows you to use the speaker to listen to audio content from your phone or other source device. Most recommend it for “podcasts or audiobooks,” which implies that the controllers aren’t really tuned to music that hasn’t been ravaged by the FM radio signal.

With a color screen, the Shelford also offers some other useful features, including an alarm clock and sleep timer. It also has a headphone jack, so you can use wired audio if you want to listen to Radio 4 without anyone else knowing.

As you can probably tell from the name, the Mini Shelford is quite small; Most say the footprint is “13cm”, although it is unclear what that means and no weight is given.

Either way, it’s portable, so you can take it out to the garden or move it around your bedroom. There is a rechargeable battery, although Majority has not announced how long it will last. How does it sound? Leave it in our hands, we would love to know…