It’s the perfect time of year to grab a cheap radio for the garden, and they don’t get much cuter, more feature-packed or wallet-friendly than this

Majority unveils its compact Mini Shelford
It is a DAB+ and FM radio that also functions as a Bluetooth speaker
There is also a headphone jack, sleep timer and alarm

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

And now, Majority has got a new option which is tiny, adorable looking, nice and cheap. This is Mini Shelford (not to be confused with Great Shelford, a village just outside Cambridge, UK).

The Mini Shelford costs just £49 (about $65, AU$100) and goes on sale in August. It’s a smaller version of another Majority radio, called the Little Shelford, with many of the same features but an even smaller footprint.

Loaded with features

As you might imagine, the Mini Shelford lets you listen to DAB+ and FM radio. You could still have enjoyed the Wimbledon final if you happened to be in a dark place (not that I’m speaking from experience or anything).

But 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 another source device. The majority recommend it for “podcasts or audiobooks”, implying that the drivers aren’t really tuned for music that hasn’t already been corrupted by the FM radio signal.

With a color display, the Shelford also offers a few other useful features, including an alarm clock and sleep timer. It also has a headphone jack so you can go with 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; The majority says the footprint is “13 cm”, although it is not clear what that means and there is no weight.

Either way, it’s portable so you can take it out into 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 that sound? Leave it to us, we’d love to find out…