At Walgreens last week I noticed they had three different models of tiny earphone radio. I've looked for this type of thing before unsuccessfully, so they are new. By earphone radio, I mean a complete radio built into an earpiece. They had two FM-only models and an AM-only model; no AM-FM, sorry. All three versions that they had would easily fit in an Altoids PSK kit and each weighs maybe 1/2 ounce. The FM versions each use two alkaline LR44 button cells and the AM version uses one LR44. I bought the AM version. My previous experiments with small radios make me estimate that the LR44's should last for several hours, but not several days or anything like that. LR44's are very cheap batteries, like 25 cents each from batterystation.com, and you can stash a few spares in very little space. They are not much bigger than aspirin tablets. The radios were $5.99 each or $10.00 for two. I might investigate modding the AM radio so it can be alternately powered from an AA cell. One AA ought to be able to run it for days on end. You could also use #357 or SR44 silver oxide cells (direct replacement for LR44) and they should last longer than LR44's, but they cost more.

One FM version had a digital scanning system that's shown up in a lot of cheap headset radios lately. Basically you press a button and the radio scans upward to the next signal that it can find. You can't really tell what station you're tuned to, without waiting for them to announce it. But the radios do work ok. The other FM version had an analog tuning knob that might make it easier to re-locate a given station. I think it had no tuning scale printed on it though. The AM version has analog tuning again with no scale. The FM versions had small pieces of wire (retractable on one of them) sticking out for use as antennas. The AM version had a squarish plastic part that looked like a small ferrite bar antenna was inside. None of the radios had volume controls as far as I noticed.

In my city environment, reception from the AM unit was acceptable but not great. Selectivity between stations wasn't so hot, and the audio was somewhat tinny. But it was certainly good enough to get news updates in the event of a blackout, hurricane, or whatever. I don't know how well it would work out in the boonies.

I can't report on the FM units since I didn't try them. However I have a few larger versions of the digital scan radios and their reception is actually pretty decent.

Anyway, any of these might make a nice addition to an EDC kit. If you're not after completely minimal size though, you might find a bigger radio more useable.