
Sometimes, all you want is something that does the job. In a world that seems to get smarter, faster and more bewildering by the day, there’s still a place for the simpler things in life.
Nobody is denying the convenience of multi-channel streaming or voice-activated smart home hubs, but there’s an old-school charm to a classic, no-nonsense DAB radio that, when it isn’t dodging splatters of paint from hard working builders, can sit in the corner of the kitchen happily pumping out Radio 1.
Named after a small village in Cambridgeshire, UK, Majority’s Little Shelford is charged with such a purpose. Billed as a portable, affordable and hassle-free FM and DAB radio, it could be ideal for anyone who just wants a fuss-free digital radio that will have you riding the airwaves at the touch of a button.
Build & design

Considering the low price of £45, the Little Shelford is a smart and well-made unit. No, it’s not as adorable, stylish or well-built as the dinky Roberts Revival Petite 2 (which is double the price at £100), but the standards of construction and finish don’t have us worrying that the buttons will start malfunctioning or the extendable antenna will snap in half if you so much as look at it.

Radio FM, DAB/DAB+
Features 15-hour battery life, dual alarm, 10 presets
Bluetooth? Yes
Connections 3.5mm headphone port
Dimensions (hwd) 17 x 13 x 10cm
Weight 760g
Finishes x 6 (Midnight Blue, Black, Cream, Duck Egg, Grey, Red)
Be it the stitching of the leather carry strap or the tactility of the metal front grille, there’s little here that stands out as being poorly finished or potentially susceptible to breaks or wear.
That carry strap adds to the Shelford’s portability credentials, but considering no IP waterproof rating is provided with the unit, we’d steer clear of taking it outside unless the skies are clear and the garden hose is switched off.
If we’re being less charitable, the speaker’s top panel isn’t made from a particularly premium-feeling plastic, and those control buttons don’t set the heart aflutter when pushed.
Still, everything is easy to use and logically laid out, with a top-mounted LCD display that’s easy to read and nicely illuminated if you’re using your radio in low light. You’d be pushing your luck asking for much more at this price.
The radio is compact and light enough to easily carry with you indoors and outdoors, and looks at home perched on a kitchen counter or on a desk.
The top panel of the Little Shelford houses a centrally mounted control dial flanked by buttons for skipping playback, a dimmer switch and controls managing radio modes and presets alongside a handy information button.
At the rear base, meanwhile, you’ll find a power port sitting alongside a 3.5mm headphone jack, as well as a rather cheap-feeling slideable on/off switch.
Features

For a low-cost modern radio, the Little Shelford has enough tricks up its sleeve to keep us satisfied. Standard Bluetooth connectivity is a big plus, and getting connected to the Little Shelford is a breeze. Choosing Bluetooth as your source will automatically prime the Majority to pair, whereas saved devices will easily re-establish a connection by revisiting the radio’s Bluetooth mode.
The Little Shelford will plug into the mains, but you can also take the portable radio on your travels with you thanks to a solid 15-hour battery life. In what feels like an anachronism in these days of built-in power packs, the back of the radio houses a rear panel into which you can slot four AA batteries for portable playback.
It’s a useful feature, but given the potential cost of replacing four AA batteries a week, you might end up spending more than you’d bargained for if you’re planning to regularly use your radio as a portable companion. A pack of 12 Duracell AA batteries will set you back £12 in the UK, and those numbers can easily ratchet up if you’re not careful.
Let’s not forget that this is primarily a radio that we’re dealing with. The Majority offers FM and DAB/DAB+ tuners, with ten presets for saving your favourite stations available at the press and hold of a button.
You can also set dual alarms via the ‘info’ button, and though it took us a while (and a little research) to figure out how to do it, once we’ve nailed down the procedure, it’s a surprisingly intuitive experience.
In fact, there are very few functions that have us stumped when operating our given test unit. In a world of companion apps and smart controls, more old-fashioned analogue designs can be tricky to navigate, but we struggle to find a procedure – be it changing the date and time or saving Kerrang! Radio as our seventh go-to preset – that we can’t figure out.
Sound

Considering it costs little more than a dinner for two at Pizza Express, we’re hardly expecting the Majority to move mountains when it comes to its sonic performance. We’re always open to being pleasantly surprised, but we make sure to keep our expectations somewhat realistic as we settle down for a session with the Little Shelford radio.
And you know what? It’s not bad. Keep your caveats about the Majority radio’s price in the back of your mind and you’ll find it to be a competent operator that fires out a sound that hangs together reasonably well.
While we don’t detect a veritable host of sonic layers, all neatly stacked on top of one another like a sandwich in an episode of Scooby Doo, it would be wrong to call the Little Shelford disorganised – textures and instruments stay in their respective lanes, and rarely do we fret that our music is sliding around on an unstable foundation.
The super-cheap radio manages to keep a reasonably firm grip on your music, doing its level best to keep Björk’s Army Of Me from collapsing into a sloppy, cacophonous mess. Heaven forbid.
The clarity on display won’t knock you for six – there’s a hint of muffled muddiness to each track and station we select – but instrumental details aren’t omitted from the equation either. Voices are nicely communicated, so that whether we're listening to the presenters on Classic FM or Radio X, speech comes through with discernible personality.
Simpler tunes fare well, so that Waxahatchee’s vocals and accompanying guitar on Right Back To It are communicated with surprising nuance and delicacy. The guitar genuinely does sound like a real instrument, and for this sort of money, that was never going to be a guarantee.

There’s some excitement to be found, too. The Little Shelford isn’t soft and it certainly isn’t backward in coming forward, exhibiting a robust, if slightly hard-edged character that sometimes strays into sounding rather mean and industrial.
The smaller, more costly Roberts Revival Petite 2’s sonic signature is easier to digest thanks to its sweeter, more natural tone, qualities the Majority trades for a more unforgiving character.
Tricker sonic elements do fall by the wayside somewhat. We don’t discern a great swell of dynamics on, say, Hans Zimmer’s Up Is Down, nor do we find ourselves swept along by the propulsive momentum of Wolfgang Gartner’s Illmerica.
These characteristics depend somewhat on the format or station you choose. Bluetooth provides a stable sound signature, as does digital radio, but we find the quality of the FM stations, with their slightly background fuzziness, to be trickier to listen to.
Still, for nailing the essential ingredients to make your music sound passable for under £50, we don’t feel short-changed by the modestly priced Majority.
What about that 3.5mm headphone jack we mentioned earlier? We connect a pair of Austrian Audio Hi-X20 to our test unit, noticing that the slightly lean-sounding over-ears retain much of their signature character. It’s not a bad performance by any means, and the Hi-X20’s detail, clarity and nuance still remain when paired with the Little Shelford.
Verdict

The Majority Little Shelford fulfils its brief admirably. You’ll have to pay a good deal more if you want a more sophisticated performance from the likes of the adorable Roberts Revivial Petite 2.
If all you want is a solid-sounding radio with handy Bluetooth capabilities and a reasonably solid build, all without emptying your bank balance in the process, the Majority does what it sets out to do.
For this price, it would be cheeky to ask for much more.
Review published: 9th June 2025
SCORES
- Sound 4
- Build 4
- Features 4
MORE:
Read our review of the Roberts Revival Petite 2
Best DAB radios: the best-sounding digital radios that we highly recommend
7 tracks we've been enjoying in our test rooms over the past month