You may have seen this radio before, but this is Version 3, with all the bugs and kinks worked out. Check it out here:
In the internet the price for that kind of transceiver is around 400 USD. So when they sell a piece of high technology dirt cheap, it means its over. Or it cant be so good as it seems to be. The question is more, if its the next chinese junk or its a good quality SDR. The answer is easy to find in the longterm test and under stressful situations. Mostly those devices cant stand the situations in a longterm, when they are driven to the edge of the possibel. Then they mostly will go its natural way. And thats not what operators awaits from their machines.
The current price for the base configuration is $521 on AliExpress. The seller says they're running a batch of 100 version-3 units. The manual is in Chinglish. No VFO knob. How many press cycles are those arrow keys going to take before getting flaky? I was foolish enough to buy the Xiegu G1M. Interior modules and the keyboard are secured by gobs of hot glue applied instead of fasteners. Never again Chinese. For 25% more money you can buy a Yaesu FT-818. That's a compact, rugged, shack-in-a-box with a warranty from a company selling ham radios into the US since the 1970's. (I have the FT-817ND.)
They didn't even install an encoder. Look at the prices of microprocessors and think for yourself what might be inside.
It's an STM32H743IIT6 ARM chip from the Cotex M7 line, 32-bit, single core, clocked at 480 MHz, 2MB of program store, and a double-precision floating point unit. Helluva little screamer for $10.50 each (Qty 400 from Arrow.) But there's a lot more to making a good receiver than sticking a miracle microcontroller on a PCB. Here is a photo from the product page on AliExpress. Hilarious, because it's not a sealed radio. The Chinese just can't dial it back a notch when pushing a product.
Exactly! But in any case, it determines the level of the system as a whole. You can't build a good SUV based on a 1.6 engine without turbo. I am sure that all other components are also entry-level. I doubt that there are Amidon rings or TDK inductances. My conclusion is that this is yet another example of an entry-level piece of Chinese crap.
From what I can tell it does not transmit on 2200m, 630m, or 1.25m. Not every country has those bands but FYI. If the GPS input actually locks the local oscillator (when the GPS time option installed), then I am intrigued. From my reading of the manual, it does not appear to do so. Most SDRs omit the knobs anyways so as long as software has no glitches I would like it. i'd like to see some bench tests of this version, especially LO stability and Sherwood type receiver tests. Hopefully it has good output filtering.
They do deserve tons of credit for trying. In the USA its nearly impossible to bring new stuff like that to market unless you have a huge pile of cash. Keep in mind much/nearly all the stuff you have is from China.
Not necessarily. The G90, which is hardly over, is 425, which is less than what you'll pay for this one (actually around 600). As for this radio, if you're interested, there are scads of videos on YouTube about it. If you want a small, portable 20 watt radio, it could be just the thing. My thinking? The G90 does the same for less money and has a VFO knob.
These chips are so yesterday, I cant believe it. They were only produced under license when needed. But to use today an old 32-bit architecture, shows that there is nothing more than Android in use. These kind of RISC was introduced for about eleven years. Its only a kind of a save controller system. Because ARM isnt that architecture which is in constant use today. So no OS or other things exists really, maybe just a few former linux forks which are able to use this. These chips today are only in products with a limited coverage. So nearly is a rooting not possibel.
In my opinion the price is to much, for to have fun for a limited time. Because the range is from HF to SHF. And when somebody is really intrested in, those people use devices especially for these bands. Because HF / VHF / UHF / SHF are so different. But when there is somebody, maybe a newbie, who wants to try the own limits of the own new shack and test the enviroment, its maybe useful. And when these device crashes or gets deaf, the newbie pays the apprentices due.
Too much? That will vary from ham to ham. In my opinion, it's not really too much even for just a radio that will put out 20 watts on the HF bands. It's also a lot easier to use for digital and with SDR programs than the competition, the G90. And many of us are using the G90 with great success for POTA and similar portable operations. Would I choose either as the main radio in the shack? No, of course not...but for portable? Yep. This one even, unlike the Xiegu, has a built-in battery.
But you can also ask yourself if a transceiver, the bigger and more expensive ($ 8000.-) is also that much times better.
