XHDATA D808 Portable AM FM SW LW Air Band Shortwave Radio SSB RDS Multi Band ...

This is the best portable radio I’ve ever owned and that is saying a lot. I have been DXing the a.m. radio band since I’ve was six years old (1956), and this is without a doubt, the most sensitive and selective receiver next to my car radio that I’ve ever used. It’s a great travel radio, and I can’t recommend it enough. I am a ham radio operator. I have tried just about everything and this really surprised me so if you’re searching for a good radio, you don’t need to look any further than this one. it’s priced right and the quality is superb the radio literally does everything.

This is not a very impressive looking radio, doesn't look like it should cost this much-until you tune around the bands. The reception on this compares favorably with at least one of my professional radios, and several of my others. Fools me all the time as it looks like much cheaper radios in this size range, but the reception is excellent, even without any outrigger antenna systems. Even the SSB works. the way it picks up stations, it needs to be twice it's size-since I have radios that are, that don't pick up any better than this little monster.

This is the IC chip updated Sangean 808 radio with the airplane band added also. It picks up signals across the entire bands covered. This is the big brother to the Sihuadon R-108 radio. There are 3 differences: The 808 is roughly twice as large with a better speaker. They both have excellent shortwave coverage but the 808 lets you listen to both upper & lower sideband transmissions. The 108 has no sideband selection. The 808 allows you to select your frequencies by the meter band. Different shortwave meter bands are dedicated to different uses: ham radio, international broadcast stations, international standards such as time signals, accurate frequency markers for calibration, and emergency broadcasts when regular communications are not available. The CB radio frequencies are also covered (11 meters). The 808 has more control buttons for ease of use. Both radios have full features. Both radios are portable. They have similar looks. 2 optional things that I do with all of my radios is to put bigger batteries in them when possible. The 808 uses standard 18650 lithium batteries. It comes with a 2000 mA one which is adequate for most use. I changed it to a 3000 mA battery simply for convenience of long periods of use between charging. The other thing is to change the antenna to a longer one. I favor an extendable antenna that is 100 - 115 cm long for better signal reception from Long Wave all the way up to aircraft.

From a purely performance perspective I rate this radio as a 5+ considering it's price range. Sensitivity, selectivity, frequency resolution, frequency stability, audio quality, and battery life are all excellent. The multi-level bandwidth feature is unusual in a portable receiver of this type and it works VERY well. The audio quality is very good, especially with quality earphones which are NOT included. FM RDS is a nice touch. The manual is utterly microscopic and you WILL need magnification to read it, BUT it is written in good English and not Chinglish and is fairly easy to comprehend. I suggest zooming in with your phone and taking pictures of each page of the manual. One advantage to being small is that it will fit inside the protective bag with the receiver so that you can easily take the manual with you. One of my rather unique needs was coverage of the 10 meter ham band from 28 to 28.300 MHz and this radio does that. I knocked off a star because of the tedious memory recall function and the gap in coverage between 450 KHz and 520 KHz, which admittedly are features that most people won't care about at all but they were important to me and not well explained in the ads. The memory is mapped by band which is OK with me but you are limited to 100 memories per band and I wanted more on SW. To save a memory you select the band and frequency, then press PAGE, 0, 0 (long press), to save a frequency and mode in memory bank 0, memory location 0. To recall that frequency you must go to the band where you stored it and press PAGE, 0, 0 (short press). It works and it is fairly intuitive but wouldn't it be SO MUCH BETTER TO BE ABLE TO STEP THROUGH OR ROTATE THROUGH THE MEMORIES????????!!!!! Yes it would!! It is impossible to remember where you stored 500 frequencies. It blows my mind that that feature is non-existent on this radio which is otherwise excellent. The air band is a nice touch but there is no ability to SCAN air band channels that are programmed into memory. The squelch feature is a very nice addition specifically for the Air band. The ability to change the step size is also an awesome feature. The pig-tail antenna wire is a nice addition and it really works. One thing that was unclear in the ad was whether or not you can tune between the 9 Khz steps on longwave which not all portable radios can do. I am happy to report that it does have this capability and you can use SSB on Longwave. For example I am able to tune in the local NDB on 338 KHz and use SSB to enhance sensitivity.

the d808 receiver has good sensitivity and sound quality. ssb is nice. rds is nice AIR band is nice and squelch helps and works in all bands light weight and easy to carry. has selectable bandwidth. 18650 battery is widely available and lasts a while cons: 1. tuning between frequencies has annoying soft mute in between steps. ergonomics/usage is poor. 2. buttons are almost flushed and hard to press. 3. there is no VFO or Memory mode. keypad defaults to memory mode. entering a frequency directly via keypad requires pressing FREQ first 4. cannot delete a stored memory! usage issues: 1. accessing memory channels is painful. you cannot scroll through saved memories using the scroll wheel. you need to select a memory channel via keypad and to go to a double digit memory requires requires selecting the page first. this is quite cumbersome. 2. it does not display what memory channel you're currently in. if you press page, only the current page is displayed. 3. after typing in a frequency, if you accidentally press any digit, it jumps to the memory on that page and you lose whatever frequency you were just in.

Amazing SW radio that has exceeded all expectations. Do your SW Radio comparisons and you'll find this is going to be on your list. Excellent sensitivity with great volume and totally portable. Easy to operate. Great compact radio that outperforms other radios twice the size and twice as expensive. A+

Great little radio that does ssb AND air. The radio has a great feel to it and is pretty easy to use considering. The battery life seems very impressive as Iv only charged it once in the 3 weeks of playing with it. Over all it’s a great portable radio that’s easy to tune and operate, my only issue is it seems to not receive some bands like 20m which is a bummer.

Purchased Apr 26 Return window closed May 10. Due to work didn't open until May 20. Charged, turned on, all hopeful. Went to SSB mode and would not activate. I can hear the b/w change in am mode but when touch of SSB button response is SSB>>> and no audio - tried tuning, squelch is off - this sucks. Tried headphones - no help. No audio so problem in either product detector, mode switching or bfo local oscillator. Extra class ham - know what I'm doing. Battery out wait 15 min. 60 second power on (in no bat state) then battery in, reset via hole on bottom. No - no SSB - not even tiniest of hiss. Very disappointed Great radios when they work - recommend full function check upon receipt and before out of return window.

Bueno

Rádio muito bom!

Très impressionné par cette petite radio, elle demeure une radio bon marché chinoise relativement fragile, mais capte beaucoup de stations ondes-courtes, et aussi en AM. Je ne suis pas un grand amateur des stations utilitaires et amateurs, mais la bande latérale unique fonctionne a merveille et on peut faire l'accord fin je crois par un VFO émulé par le DSP, c'est pas génial mais à ce prix c'est parfaitement adéquat. En FM on sent bien les limites d'un DSP Silicon Labs bas de gamme, le bruit de fond est prononcé, et la séparation stéréo est faible, par contre le rapport bruit signal est quand-même bien et sur le haut-parleur mono c'est très correcte. Je recommande cette radio... surtout quand elle a un rabais sur Amazon. Elle sera livrée rapidement et bien emballée. Si elle était chère j'aurais été plus critique, mais je trouve que cette radio est une belle porte d'entrée pour découvrir les ondes courtes, sinon une bonne radio secondaire pour le camping ou le travail.

الرائدة ممتاز لازم تحط سلك فيري الارتفاع 10 متر وهذا طبيعي في الراديو واستقبال الإشارة مرة حلو

Tiene buena recepción, lo he notado sobre todo en las estaciones AM, donde los radios comunes no reciben mas que ruido, este radio recibe muy bien, en el norte de México recibe muy bien la estación 1200 AM que transmite desde San Antonio, Tex. También recibe bien la 1570 AM desde Acuña, Coah. En onda corta también recibe bien, solo que no hay muchas estaciones. La batería bastante aceptable, la banda SSB no la uso mucho, pero si he notado que ayuda bastante. Lo único que mejoraría es tratar de hacer más sencilla la operación de los botones, no pude programar la fecha correctamente porque no sé cómo hacerlo. El color del texto a un lado de los botones es muy difícil de ver, no contrasta y son letras muy pequeñas, ojalá los hicieran de un color que se pueda ver mejor. También pueden mejorar mucho la pantalla, pueden hacerla más grande y clara. Si alguien no tiene muy buena vista, va a necesitar una lupa para ver el texto en los botones y a un lado de ellos.