SIHUADON R-108 not only has a manual search mode. It also has an Auto-Tuning Memory (ATS) mode. Press and hold “BAND” to automatically search for stations with stronger signals and store them in the radio. This mode greatly saves the time spent manually storing the station. For stations that do not receive strong signals, it is suitable for manual storage. Dual mode storage station for you to choose from. I have both the D-808 and PL-660. I have to say my experience is contrary to some of the findings in this review. My PL-660 trounces the D-808 on LW. It’s not even close. Even at night here in the UK the D-808 struggles to get BBC Radio 4 on 198khz. Pretty much nothing else. The PL-660 pulls in all the main stations from Europe, some very strongly. On MW they’re both very similar, a slight edge to the PL-660. This amazed me because when I got the PL-660 the other day I was buying on the expectation that MW and LW were poor. A bonus! Recent additions to the shortwave portable receiver market have been quite impressive, especially considering the continuing decline in the use of shortwave as a transmission method by broadcasters. My 2021 unit came with 3.81V in the battery (still a XHDATA 2000mAh device) and the battery level indicator had 2 bars.

Thank you for sharing this technical overview of the XHDATA D-808, Gary! I’m looking forward to the antenna mods you’ll no doubt make to this compact DX machine! I always try new receivers at my favourite listening post at the (German) North Sea shore, many of you know how beneficial such a location is for DXing. My favorite spot there is far away from any houses, power lines or other interference sources on the land side, so besides some sheep-made noise the man-made noise is as low as it gets, measured less than -130dBm (which is the receiver noise) on a 1/2 lambda dipole above 10 MHz. The squelch also works adequately in my opinion. Set it level 1 and it will not mute the audio due to the noise floor inside house (around 12dBu), but at level 2 it would mute it; then the radio is able to unmute the audio for signals as low as 25dBu. The design choice used on the D-808 was to save costs on the audio pre-amp and simply configured theCS4863's OpAmp1A andOpAmp2A with a very high bridged mode differential gain of 77 (!)I also have a Grundig Satellit 750, if I hook that up to the external antenna that came with the Sihuadon D-808, it blasts in with a signal of 20-25. Functional: Alarm function, sleep mode, and the time can be set and displayed in the off state. The sleep timer setting can be automatically turned off according to your lifestyle settings. R108 radio can be placed on the bedside, get up in the morning, enjoy the wake-up service of the radio, and watch the time with an open eye. When you brush your teeth, you can listen to the radio and keep up to date with the news. The PL-880 has the dreaded distortion on SSB which can be annoying, on the D-808 it’s hardly noticeable. The S-8800 suffers the same on SSB. Notwithstanding some duds, the PL-660 is known to be a little sensitivity monster on shortwave. When I don’t feel like putting up wires etc. for my SDR, I just take the Tecsun to the beach and through the years I own it, I’ve logged plenty of true DX (JA, VK/ZL or WWVH on a regular basis) with it there, just using the telescopic whip.

Due to product quality problems within 1-3 months of receiving the product, we can replace it with a new one, but the customer pays for the logistics costs incurred. Do not submit a product review critiquing another review or reviewer. Reviewers should be able to share their product opinion without being publicly criticized. Even after all of these years, my Sony 7600GR continues to hang tough and when connected to an external antenna, was performing almost as well as the X2 despite what should have been a run away in terms of all the benefits that come with a DSP based receiver. Confirmed empirically, by listening to some radio stations at night. This radio is kind of silent below 2.5MHz.

Tecsun PL-880 - I got a good one. Close in sensitivity to the 2010, has nice selection of bandwidths and great audio. I really like this receiver. At the same time the close proximity to the water results in somewhat boosted signals, so I can assess both reception quality at the lowest sensitivity threshold and behavior with strong signals. Sometimes it lets me find quirks that would go unnoticed anywhere else. Solution 1: Use a battery operated headphone amp. Keeping the volume on radio to moderate/high use the volume on headphone amp to reach desired level. This will completely eliminate the noise. This works because the audio signal to noise ratio increases so much with moderate volume that when you reduce the audio through the amp the noise levels become absolutely inaudible. I use FiiO Q1 amp which has a digitally stepping volume control which eliminates any stereo channel imbalance at low volume. This imbalance issue is also there in d808 because it has analog potentiometer vol. control. What a brilliant, detailed assessment of the D-808! Thank you so much for sharing this! I’m absolutely jealous of your North Sea listening location–looks to be idyllic! A DW01A (IC2) & a 82015A MOSFET (IC1) do overcharge protection, while a TP4056 (U2) charges the Li-Ion battery at 400mA until it reaches 4.2V.

The portable radio manufacturing industry has changed pretty dramatically over the past few years as much of the advanced technology used by foreign companies in their radio factories in China has been “appropriated” (to use a generous term) by new Chinese competitors. Without getting into the political ramifications of such behavior the obvious fact in the 2021 portable radio market is that all of the top competitors in this Shootout come from factories in China, and four of the five have Chinese name brands. For those who feel uneasy about this rampant copying of foreign technology the American-designed C. Crane Skywave is still available, although even it is still manufactured in Shenzhen, China—the nerve center of such copying. The DC-DC converter was not properly shielded in the previous versions, being a source of RF noise. Other better radio brands, even ones using the same basic chassis, use shielded DC-DC converters. My 2021 unit present these transitory noises. I wonder if the muting system is not being enabled by the MCU firmware. Bug or hardwaredesign fault? Shortwave Single Side Band (SSB) minimum step is 1 kHz, Upper Side Band (USB) and Lower Side Band (LSB) reception independent When switching to SSB a “loading bar” shows up first, the entire process between hitting the “SSB” button and getting reception again takes 5 seconds. Actually, these radios basically consist of a “radio-on-a-chip” and a microcontroller so it really might be a loading bar we see there. This controller seems to be not exactly fast in the D-808 anyway, so even using the tuning knob comes with occasional hesitations – I advance the main tuning encoder one indention and the frequency changes only 1-2 seconds later. Changing bands is not exactly fast either but at least toggling between USB and LSB works instantaneously.Searching round, there have been quite a few reports of this fault on the web and it looks like its a design flaw. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be the support in place to get the radio fixed so when it goes wrong, it is cheaper to post it direct to the nearest landfill. Even when inserting a fully charged Li-Ion battery, the radio only shows 3 bars (corresponding to at least 4.1 Volt reading)for a few minutes of usage.After that it will show 2 bars (around 3.7 Volt reading) for many hours of usage.Eventually it will show just 1 bar (low 3.4 Volt reading). So, in SSB on on the D-808 you have: 4.0 kHz, 3.0 kHz, 2.2 kHz, 1.2 kHz, 1.0 kHz, and an amazing .5 kHz ! Imagine that: .5 kHz This is making an old dream come true for me – a full-featured “communication receiver” (well, almost) that’s “wearable”, one that allows me to enjoy hands-free and hassle-free full shortwave reception on all bands without compromises (particularly in sensitivity) when I do the boring walks the doctor prescribed! It’s doubtful that XHDATA or some other manufacturer will consider competing directly with Tecsun and Sangean. But the D-808 carved out a place for itself in the small portable category, at an extremely competitive price point.