A radio device requires a tunable transceiver such that the transceiver can be accurately set to a desired frequency. When a signal with known frequency accuracy is being received, an offset detector can determine the frequency offset generated by the transceiver due to improper tuning. An automatic frequency control (AFC) system (100) is comprised of a tunable transceiver, an offset detector (103) and an AFC control processor (105) for utilizing information from the offset detector to reduce the inaccuracy in frequency by tuning the transceiver towards the received signal frequency. The AFC control processor (105) utilizes one of more threshold levels for defining a maximum correction threshold (311) based upon the desired maximum offset correction. These thresholds are used by the AFC control processor (105) to efficiently control the predetermined frequency range of the tunable transceiver (101) for most efficient operation.