TECSUNPL880 Portable Digital PLL Dual Conversion AM/FM, Longwave & Shortwave Radio with SSB (Single Side Band) Reception, Color Silver

What a great DX'r! It does what it was built to do! The Tecsun PL-880 is now my No. 1 go to tuner.The radio controls are ergonomic and intuitive. The sound is impressive with its larger speaker. There are more features on this radio than most comparable radios. Tecsun just makes good radios. Period. I will put them up against any other brand. The tuner seems very sensitive to input from the controls. Day time channel surfing is impressive, and night time is incredible. I live in a deaf area in the rural southwest. I have an extensive radio collection and this one beats them all. I'm sorry I waited so long to pull the trigger.From features like the easily replaceable single 18650 Li-on battery, to the dial back lighting switch, to the stereo switching capability, the bandwidth selector, to the now current Type C charging port. The feature list is extensive and I only name a few here. The antenna gain switch is a nice touch. So far, I haven't needed an external antenna for much. Using a clip-on adapter to the telescoping antenna does help FM reception during the afternoon and early evening hours. But it is not entirely necessary and the signal strength meter says so. There is not much S/W radio out here. But I did pick up a station out of the Miami area the first night. The AM is so strong, adding a secondary inductive coupling antenna only increases the gain to an uncomfortable hissing level on some stations.I don't use head phones, but I did connect the "line out" jack to my home stereo receiver Aux input for fun. The sound was as good as it gets. There aren't many FM stations here to choose from but the 'stereo" is there if you want it. There was no low-level hissing and the Stereo separation was quite good. The "tone" selector switch seems more like a high pass filter, and I just leave it on "treble" The sound really is awesome for a radio with a single speaker. Tecsun knocked it out of the park on this one feature alone. When I am looking to pull in more distant FM stations, I turn the stereo selector to "mono" and the reception gets better. The extendable antenna is very long. Reception is strong.The digital tuner does cut out DX lower power stations. That's just a fact. But it does so in a way that favors the stronger stations and makes them more listenable. To be honest, most distant stations here aren't listenable at all. I don't like listening to noise. This radio pulls in stations and makes them clearer if you set it up right. Read ALL the instructions. If I want those weaker stations, I have other older analog radios to do the job.The ATS tuning is nice, and there are more memory locations than I know what to do with. I manually save the clearer S/W channels, and will never utilize all of the memory on this radio. The bandwidth selector helps dial in weaker radio signals. The USB and LSB are there if you need them.The radio has a nice plastic case and the tuning knobs are metal. There is a nice weight to the radio. All the controls are in the perfect position for operating it while holding it in your hands. There is a kickstand on the back which lays the radio back a little. I use a radio stand when I am not hands on with it.The clock feature is 24 hours only unless I havent yet figured out how to change it. Features like alarms on receivers seem gimmicky. I never use them. But it is there if you need it. There are no flashlights, solar panels, or sirens on this radio, and there should not be. The signal meter, and signal to noise ratio meter is nice. You can switch to the current alarm time status, or ambient air temp. This is a serious radio for DX'ing. No gimmicks are necessary. The Tecsun PL-880 doesn't need them, and I applaud the manufacturer for resisting any urge to add them.The included rechargeable 18650 button top battery is at the lower end. It still does last a long while. I left the radio on for a full afternoon and an into the evening session, and it still had some charge the next day. It is easy to change out and the choice of replacements with more amp hours is unlimited. You can almost double the playtime with the "right" battery...I know that there are more Tecsun radios with stereo speakers, like the PL-990x and the H501, but they do not get the sound quality that this radio enjoys with its large and "tuned" Hi-Fi speaker. The fidelity really is amazing! I watched quite a few reviews before purchasing this radio, and I think that I made the right choice.The brown leather (look) storage case is a nice touch. There are other nice accessories available from Tecsun as well. A plastic foam lined case is on my list of them as is a long wire antenna, and a second rechargeable battery. The 18650 is nice, and easy to upgrade to a higher milliamp battery, but I would like to see a BL-5c battery here and maybe an on-board storage compartment for the extra battery.I would also like to see Tescun produce a larger "table" radio with these features. Something bigger like the C.Crane CC3. A radio that I could leave in the kitchen or on the fireplace mantle.This is a nice portable radio that can double duty as a kitchen table top radio. The reception and sound are simply amazing and I have nothing but positive things to say. I don't regret my purchase and neither will you! I can't wait to travel to other cities and see what my radio will do!

TLDR: Outstanding Audio Quality, Excellent Top-Notch Performance (sensitivity/selectivity-but with a controversial ssb/sync issue), Ease of Use, Rechargeable Battery Operation, Extreme Performance to Price Ratio, The Best Quality Control of Amazon Offerings.I have been into DXing since I was a kid cuz my dad had also been into radio when he was a kid, building crystal radios, etc. The original single store Radio Shack was in the city where I grew up and a weekend outing with my father to The Radio Shack was always an adventure. As a teen I had a Hallicrafters as a bedside radio.Skip to 1990's. Lived in a high rise with a balcony where I could set up an awesome antenna. Discovered E&B Electronics (now closed), a 20 minute drive from my home that sold top shelf SW,Ham Transceivers, UHF Scanners, but I eventually had to move to a condo with no balcony and had generally lost interest. In my storage closet are a Drake R8, an Icom IC-R7100 (unblocked), an AOR 3000A(unblocked), and an iconic Sony ICF-SW77.For the past 10 years my bedside radio has been a small portable 5 station preset Sony ICF-M410V that I paid $60 for. (It's still available on Amazon but the link is like a paragraph long). It served me well and had good sound from its 3" speaker. It's tuning knob now only goes in one direction so I decided to replace it.I have been studying the top battery operatable AM/FM/SW radios on Amazon for over a month. I must have watched at least 50 comparative videos on YouTube and concluded that the PL880 could not be beat performance wise and sound quality was important to me. (The PL 600 was right up there at the top of the performance scale, but my major use of the radio will be for FM listening and sound quality was of great importance to me.) Along with performance, the single factor that made me ulitamately zero in on this Tecsun PL880 was quality and quality control. Yeah, I'd like to have a Grundig 750 cuz it looks so cool, or a Sangean 909x cuz of it's display (but sub par performance without an outside antennae), or a CC Crane, but looking at all the reviews for those there were just too many peeps who received dead on arrivals or short-lived radios. The Tecsun has almost none that I saw. So when I saw the PL880 being offered for same day delivery yesterday I impulsively pulled the trigger and I am happy I did.This radio excudes the feel of quality. It's audio quality is nothing short of amazing. I keep a Grundig S3250DL on my desk. The Grundig is known for its excellent sound. If you were not doing a side by side comparison, unless you are tone deaf, you would have to admit that the audio quality from the PL880 is outstanding both for voice and music. It also can pump it out at room filling volumes. Side by side, while I can hear a subtle overall difference, the audio that the PL880 puts out is hard to distinguish from that of the Grundig. Kudos to Tecsun!While I am not yet fully familiar with the operation of the 880, 5 minutes after the battery was installed and fully charged I did a scan on the FM/AM/SW bands; 1.) FM Band - I was stunned at the number of stations that I had been missing with my Sony and the excellent radio I have in my car. All crystall clear; 2.) AM was ok but much better than expected.In the building where I live the way it is configured and the materials used to construct it AM is hardly worth the effort, yet the 880 pulled in quite a few stations well that I did not know existed; 3.) SW - Then I said what the hay and attached the included antenna, ran it across a window inside and did a SW scan. I expected nothing, but got 39 hits :-) Some were very strong and clear, but as they were all foreign speaking except one, I have no idea where they were broadcasting from. Looks like my DXng days have been revived.I do agree with those who say that the final top extension of the antenna is extremely thin and fragile. I wil not be extending the antenna its full length because of this . Also, having lived with this radio for a few days now, I find accessing stored channels somewhat cumbersome and anti-intuitive, but I gues that's the price you pay for having THREE THOUSAND storage channels :-)If you can spare the bucks and are looking for an outstanding sounding, battery operated, easily portable, handome looking radio (with the added benefits of SW/LW/Emergency Info. abilities), buy yourself a PL880 -You'll love it. The way I look at it, at my age if I can buy myself a thrill for $169 bucks it's a great deal :-)