PL880 Portable Digital PLL Dual Conversion AM/FM Longwave Shortwave Radio with SSB (Single Side Band) Reception

The PL-880 is the third shortwave receiver I have bought. First I had the PL-600, which got me into the hobby in a big way, but once I wanted to start really hunting distant signals I picked up a Grundig 750 (actually a Tecsun radio too, everyone) because I don't have a few grand spare to buy something from Icom. Next I went searching for something that would work for DXing, but also be very portable. I chose this over the Sangean 909x after a long back and forth. Here was my calculus: the 880 has reported firmware issues (which are fixable and have been/are being fixed) whereas the Sangean 909x has reported sensitivity issues, which without putting your radio under the knife yourself, cannot be remedied even with great antenna work (portables, all portables, tend to overload when attached to a serious outdoor or active antenna). Sensitivity issues of any kind are a no-go for a DXer, so I got the Tecsun. Man has it blown my expectations out of the water. Here is the blow by blow: Build and aesthetics: solid, solid, solid. I will be moving to China soon and bringing this. I am more worried about breaking my own leg than anything happening to this thing. It includes a nice feaux leather (animal lovers thank you, Tecsun) carrying case that is perfect for travel. The knobs, and I must admit, I am a sucker for turning knobs, are smooth and tuning with them is dead on accurate. They are not overly sensitive like on that on the Grundig 750, so no worries about sneezing and loosing your signal. The radio feels well built, the buttons are responsive and touch firmly. Display is standard. It does not display a ton of information, but I do like having a numeric value for the signal strength and S/N ratio. Helps for reception reporting. Finally, this radio just looks classy. It is the sort of thing that I would not mind leaving out in my living room with guests over. It has the look of some of the old Zenith radios. No offense Tecsun, but the 600 and 660 looked straight out of a 990s sears catalog, however quality their internals were. Thanks for changing this with the 880. Features: While some are hidden and not fully implemented (don't even try the sync) it is packed with useful features. The band scanning function works wonderfully. Before I night of shortwave listening I like to go ahead and log domestic stations along with Radio Havana Cuba so that I can just dial past them as I try to pull in weak signals. One simple scan once the 49 and 60 meter bands open up at night, and all of the strong signals are in memory so I can quickly log them and then ignore them as I band scan later. Short of jamming Brother Stair's signals and/or shutting him down, this is the best gift Tecsun could give to North American SWLs who aren't interested in religious wackjobs or right-wing conspiracy theories. Single Side Band tuning is absolutely rocking on this receiver. First, it has both LSB and USB modes. A nice feature not found on many portables. Rather than a traditional BFO, it engages a >1khz frequency selection function (adding .00 to the readout) when in SSB mode that allows you to tune with the precision necessary to really get the most out of listening to the amateur bands. It surpasses the Grundig 750 even, which is no slouch on SSB. The 750's BFO suffers from the same limitations of other portables: you are always going to be just a few hertz off, and thus HAMs will always sound a bit distorted, when all you can do is tune SSB to the nearest 1 Khz and add a carrier on the back end. This is particularly true for DXing, where you are already fighting noise and interference to hear HAMs on the other side of the globe. I can't fathom the negative reviews this gets for SSB. It has precision tuning that is normally found exclusively on high end tabletop transceivers/receivers. The station memory works fine, although other than the use listed above, I don't fool with memories that much except to save my local NPR stations. Backlight is great. Contrary to popular belief there is a way to turn it off (the side switch has only automatic/on). Press and hold 5 while the unit is in standby. Sorted. Battery life is excellent. I have to charge it every 3 days or so with heavy use. I *love* that it charges over USB. That means one charger for my phone, ipad, and radio will do the trick when traveling. It does not come with an AC adaptor. They used to ship with the units, but the drawback to Lithium ion batteries is that when charging they produce RF interference, so the only remedy was for Tecsun to stop including an AC unit. They should, I will say, state explicitly in the manual that the unit is not meant to be listened to while charging. Just charge it like you would anything else when not in use. It does, I would also add, take quite a while to charge fully. But once charged it stays charged. The speaker sounds incredible. While the unit only has a bass/treble switch for EQ emphasis control, Tecsun has calibrated these to the sweet spots for stereo-FM and MW/SW audio. No comparison to my Grundig 750, where the Bass control seems to pull up your highs for whatever reason, and whose speaker is far inferior, as far as sound is concerned. Bandwidth filtering on here is another stand out feature that Tecsun clearly but some work into. There are 4 selectable filtering options in AM, and 3 in SSB, and they are perfect for tuning out interference without sacraficing too much audio quality. I do wish that the 2.3 khz wide filter setting on AM were just a bit narrower. IMO your narrow filter should go for readability over sound fidelity, whereas Tecsun appears to have tried to save both. But there are no cases where the 2.3 khz wide filter has been inadequate enough to cause anything under a 3 in the SIMPO ratings of my reception reports, and I have logged about 250 with the Tecsun. The included random wire antenna works well. I suggest doing what I did: get some standard 3.5 mm cable extenders so that you can have the entire length of the reel outside. I mounted one that came with my 600 onto my chimney and ran it into my room with great results. Since I am about to move to the big city and outdoor antennas will be difficult, I also got the Kaito active loop and it works well with the Tecsun. What noise it does amplify is taken care of on the back end by the Tecsun. I have also used the Sangean reel antenna with the unit, with good results. I saved the best feature for last: the telescopic whip antenna. These are famous among shortwave listeners for, well, sucking at pulling in high frequency AM signals. Both my Tecsun 600 and my Grundig 750 are spotty with Radio Havana Cuba on 49 meters (and I am right here in Georgia where they should boom in) if just using the telescopic whip. RHC, along with tons of South American broadcasters, boom in on the barefoot Tecsun 880. I have logged Romania, Deutche Welle out of Rwanda, Australia, and more without any external on this thing. If tuning local FM stations, do not extend the whip at all: just stand it up. It is so sensitive that it will overdrive the unit. Extended, it can pull in FM signals from Atlanta that normally are marginal here in NW Georgia. It is extremely long, and at the end is thinner than a toothpick, so handle it carefully. One small complaint is that it does not fit snugly back into its socket. I think that the factory fastened it to the unit too tightly, so this may be fixable. Of course, serious DXing means you need something external. But it is nice to be able to listen to Radio Australia in the morning as I have my coffee without having to hook up the external. If the signal propagates well, the Tecsun's whip can pull it in on its own. Rare indeed for a shortwave radio. Hidden features are well documented so I wont go into them here. Reception: Sensitivity is excellent, although admittedly at times it is too sensitive. I have to attenuate the antenna gain, for example, when listening to the Voice of Vietnam's relay signal out of South Carolina. But better too sensitive than useless for DXing! Selectivity is this radios one major weak point. I think that Tecsun focused on delivering a really capable radio that can pull in signals like a champ at the expensive of a selective unit. This is really only a problem when tuning distant signals that are adjacent to domestic broadcasters. I have only needed to go over to my Grundig 750 to log a decent reception report once, however, so this problem is not a deal breaker. Since most SWLs have multiple radios, it is not even much of a concern. If you need better selectivity, go to something like the Grundig 750 or a high-end tabletop. I hear the 660 is more selective. My 600 is about the same as the 880. FM reception as I noted above is excellent. MW reception is good, not outstanding, but good. You will not be doing any MW DXing on this unit without something like the external ferrite passive loop that Eton offers. Cannot comment on LW since we do not have anyone broadcasting LW signals North America. When propagation conditions are poor, this radio far outperforms the 600 and the G-750. When they are excellent, this radio usually outperforms or matches them. It sounds better than both. It looks better than both. Save for Airband on the 750 (which is just there, but not any good at all) it matches them feature for feature and then some. It will not replace my Grundig, which hs become my go-to unit for MW DXing and my backup unit when I need the selectivity. But it has brought high-end features to my monitoring setup without the high end price tag. To the hardcore SWLs out there who want to give good reception reports: you need a portable exactly like this one. Why? Our hobby is a service to international broadcasters who want to know how they reach their audience. Broadcasters that beam signals to the developing world don't give a rats behind that you pulled in their station on a 4 grand transceiver that costs more than the lifetime income of many in their audience. They want to know how everyday radios pick up their station. Here you have an everyday radio. It may have functionality that blows other radios in its class out of the water, but it is nonetheless in that class. Not a perfect radio. But perfect enough for us SWL fanatics, and imperfect enough to make our reception reporting worthwhile.

I’m very happy with this radio. The decision was complicated. I spent almost two months reading reviews and watching YT videos before finally deciding to buy the Tecsun PL880. The unit I received was brand new, and the battery seems to work properly. I’ve been testing it for a couple of days. From my location, the radio scans over 70 FM stations and 20+ shortwave bands (Japan, Spain, Germany, China, the US, and others) using only the included extension antenna. The sound quality is excellent, which was one of the main reasons I chose this model. One thing I noticed is that the battery indicator is not very precise. When the battery is about to run out, it can still show a full indicator and then the radio turns off shortly after. I’ve seen other reviews mention the same thing. For me this isn’t a big issue because once the radio is fully charged it lasts many hours. I’m still testing to see if the indicator becomes more accurate after a few more charge cycles. My unit uses USB-C charging. Overall, I don’t regret buying this radio at all. It was a difficult decision because there are many options available, both cheaper and more expensive than the PL-880, but so far I’m really enjoying it. In the future I might also try the PL-660 and PL-330, since they also have many good reviews.

I received my Tecsun PL-880 just a week ago, and I have to say that from my perspective, it's the *almost* perfect portable shortwave radio! I came close to purchasing a Grundig SAT 750, but when that order was delayed, I opted for this radio instead. I'm certainly glad I did! I can't imagine how the Grundig could be much better, and this radio provides a more portable option. PRO's: * Amazing sensitivity on the SW bands. No matter the time of the day, the auto-scanning function seems to always pick up 40-50 (or more!) shortwave stations. And these are stations that are easily copied. (The only antennae I'm using is the $10 Sangean 'reel'. And it just runs up a corner of my room to the ceiling.) In the limited time I've operated the radio I've already copied Radio China (came "booming" in on the 22 meter band), Radio Australia, and several far eastern stations. (I'm located in the southern United States.) BTW, if you own an iPad, you can always check the frequency with the "SWBC Sked" app to ascertain the station you're currently listening to. * Very good SSB reception on the Ham Bands ... all the way through 10 Meters! I've seen some YouTube videos of this radio providing a "muffled" SSB experience, but I've had no such issues (Firmware 8820). The only thing I can think of that could cause that is having the selectable Bandwidth set to 1.2 kHz or lower. I keep it at 3 kHz for SSB. (BW Options for SSB are 4, 3, 2.3, 1.2, and 0.5 kHz. That alone is astonishing for a portable SW radio!) When switching to SSB mode, the regular tuning knob automatically switches to "slow" tuning mode (1 kHz steps) while the "Fine" tuning knob switches to "Ultra-fine". You can literally tune in 1/100 kHz steps! Needless to say, this makes it super easy to get good quality speech from SSB signals. The only problem I've seen with SSB is a bit of "splatter" for very strong signals. In those instances, I would like to have a RF gain control. The three-position antennae-attenuator switch will do the job here, but is not as convenient. In any event, that's a very minor quibble. This is still the best SSB I've ever experienced from a portable. * Very good scanning options. You can scan just one International shortwave band, or *all* the bands. Use "Page 0" for scanning, and just the most recent scan results are stored. You can then easily step through all the stations it found by simply turning the tuning knob. Only the International SW bands are scanned; it automatically skips over all the Ham Bands. Since shortwave conditions change hourly, this makes it real easy to find the current "hot" bands. * Great sound! The speaker sounds great and can easily fill a small room without straining. It almost makes me wish a Bluetooth option were available so I could run Pandora through it via my iPhone. (Maybe the next generation, perhaps?) * AM/FM --- The "AM" band is adequate. If I were serious about AM I would opt for an external antennae optimized for AM. FM is *great*! * As mentioned earlier, this radio has incredible bandwidth options for a portable. In AM/SW mode you have 9, 5, 3.5 and 2.3 kHz options available. A strong music AM station with the 9 kHz BW option engaged sounds absolutely amazing. For most AM listening I keep it on "5". I use "3" as the default for most SW listening. The SSB bandwidth options were mentioned above. It's just *great* having all these options! * Rechargeable battery with "intelligent" charging. You don't have to tell it how long to charge like some portables require. Charging is through a mini-USB port. The cable for charging was supplied, but not the charger itself. I just use my iPhone's charger, which works great. CONS: * As mentioned above, the only real feature I miss is a variable RF gain control. I think it could really help out with the SSB "splatter" mentioned above on strong signals. Again, the three-position "Ant Gain" control can help out here; it's just not as convenient to use. As far as CONS go, that's pretty much it as far as I'm concerned! Summation: I *Love* this Radio!!!

Overall, I'm happy with the unit. I bought it to tune in the WWV atomic time broadcasts while watching the 2017 total solar eclipse (see photos). With mobile apps that calculated the exact time of totality for my GPS location, let me tell you, it was really cool to be able to count down the start and end of the partial eclipse, the start and end of totality, and maximum exclipse, using WWV as a guide. I was able to count down these events right to the second! So cool!! Pros: This unit has great sensitivity and selectivity. The design of the radio looks and feels superior to other makes and models, and it feels great in your hands. For the most part, the build quality is pretty decent. Battery life is long. I like being able to charge it up using mini USB, although the mordern standard of using micro USB would be preferable. It's nice to be able to change the bandwidth between four different values for amplitude modulation (AM) and single side band (SSB). It's also great to be able to listen to SSB ham QSOs, a feature lacking but wanted in a different make and model of portable shortwave radio I used to own, and lacking in most other makes and models that I’ve seen. Of course, performance is largely dependent upon the antenna, as any ham radio operator will tell you. If you can shoot a hunk of wire that's 50 or 100 feet long across the top of a large tree, that large ear into the world of shortwave will work wonders for you. There's a connector on this unit for just such an external antenna. Also included is a wire antenna, but when indoors, that doesn't do all that much better than the telescopic antenna. If you can use an external antenna outside, that makes a huge difference. Even walking around the neighborhood with the unit's telescopic antenna erected surprised me, in terms of the stuff I was picking up. It's fun to google frequencies and/or callsigns and look up where the stations that you're listening to are transmitting from, be they shortwave broadcast or ham radio stations. Cons: Sometimes when I scan AM stations, it changes the bandwidth to a lower setting, and I have no idea why. I wish it would stay at the setting I set it to. Perhaps I’ll try resetting (similar to rebooting) the radio and see if that fixes it, as it might just be a temporary microprocessor glitch. I still haven’t figured out if there’s a way to scan ham radio frequencies. I end up manually sweeping through the ham bands, a tedious task, to say the least. If the scan function could scan ham bands, it would be nice if it would use a lower tuning step, such as 1 kHz, instead of 5 kHz, for scanning ham bands. When I got the unit brand new, I found that: • The LCD display backlighting has a small, light-colored blemish on it. • A piece of dust is stuck behind the LCD display. • One of the knobs is slightly crooked. • A couple small blemishes were found on the speaker grill, but fortunately I was able to clean them off. I get the sense that the factory that makes these units is not a very clean nor sterile place, as traces of contaminants are found on the radio, inside and out. Also, the battery indicator seems almost useless. It flickers to a medium indication and back to full when the battery is mostly gone, and I feel like it doesn’t give a true sense of battery depletion, the way a smartphone does. Once it no longer shows a full charge, I figure I only have a half hour or so remaining, maybe an hour at the most. But most of the time, the long battery life makes up for this little gripe.

When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I was an avid SW listener. The international broadcasts really opened up the world to me. I'm not quite sure how many years ago I sold my radio on eBay, but it's been many. I knew that many SW broadcasters had cut back because so much information passes through the internet. But I assumed there were some remote parts of the world that the traditional broadcasters wanted to reach. Was I wrong. It seems like here in North America, there's nothing to listen to in English but North American stations with a lot of evangelical preachers. I speak Spanish, so that opens up -- in addition to more preachers -- a chance to listen in on the battle between Radio Havana and Radio Martí. I bought an external antenna, but it just makes for louder preaching. (I haven't tried putting up a REAL antenna outside yet, but I'm not sure why I'd bother. I bet there are YouTube videos to help, though.) The weird thing is listening to shortwave and hearing that you can make your reception reports on the web. Makes sense, I guess, but it causes a lot of cognitive dissonance. Beyond that, I can listen in on boring ham operators on single side band. The SSB works better than any radio I had in the past. So that's all really just a review of the SW scene rather than the radio. I'm just saying -- if you're looking for the world of the twentieth century -- sorry, Charlie! So the radio itself -- way cheaper and way better than the fancy SW radio with digital tuning I bought from Radio Shack for $400 in the mid 80s -- quite a bit more than $1000 in today's dollars. Lots of things are adjustable to improve reception, like AM bandwidth, gain, etc., which would be a little obscure to a beginner but potentially very useful for a weak (or strong) signal. I can't complain at all about the radio. It's very highly ranked on all the SWL websites. The FM reception and sound quality is great. I assume MW reception is also good. (The radio includes LW, but I never heard a LW station in my life.) There's no Bluetooth. It would be nice to play straight into my hearing aids :( I guess to summarize -- if you're unfamiliar with the shortwave scene of 2023, read up and think carefully before plunking down the price of this receiver. Consider buying something for half as much to see if you're still interested. :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :(

The Tecsun PL-880 exceeded my expectations. Outstanding sound quality, excellent AM/FM and shortwave reception, and solid build quality. Easy to use and a pleasure to listen to. Highly recommended! Fast shipping, well packaged, and exactly as described. Smooth transaction and excellent service.

Oct 10th - I just got back from a trip and was all excited about using this radio. After charging all night I could not get it to work! With great disappointment I tried to use it with a connection to external power and it seemed to be just fine. But,. if I disconnected the external power the battery read "Lo". The radio did not function at all. How could this be? I pulled out the battery and tested it with my voltmeter. The 3.7v battery read 3.9v, which was just fine. It appears that there is something wrong with the battery connection to the radio itself. With considerable disappointment, it has been returned. Once the return is clear I do plan to buy this radio again and hope the one I get next actually functions. This is a really neat radio. I had hoped that the battery was defective in which case I'd have bought a new one and tried again. Not so. To say it again...I am DISAPPOINTED! Older review: Beware of lithium batteries while traveling on aircraft. I got this radio to use in China, but decided to leave it at home on this trip. When ou seek to fly within china you better have the radio in your bag and the battery in your carry on bag. Same for leaving China. The internal customs here will check every electronic device for rechargeable batteries. This was also the case in Burma as well. The lithium battery that comes with this radio is large...like a sausage link. They will freak out if in the radio. Policies do change so what i am saying now may prove wrong or may be an intermittent concern. Customs or their version of TSA even tore into my carry on looking for batteries...flashlights, cameras, a small radio. You just can't know what our TSA or other government policies really are. I suggest doing what I do and put batteries into plastic snack bags so they don't come in contact with anything they can ground with. I will learn more about the radio when I return homw. Very glad I did not bring on this trip. It would have been a huge hassle.

I bought mine in 2014. This radio is the first of a renowned Tecsun radio family: started with the pl880, followed by the s8800, pl990, h501x and finally the s-2200x. They all are premium products, and priced accordingly. Besides the pl880i also have a s8800 and a h501x. I can attest the pl880 is the best sounding of these. Based on the specs and other reviews I believe the s-2200x is even better, but you will pay $300 more for a beautiful but bulky tabletop radio. This is the radio you want if you want a radio small enough to take in your carry on luggage, decent AM, very good SW performance and amazing sounding FM reception. About the SW reception: unlink the majority of modern DSP based receivers, this radio does not soft muting when cruising the dial, so you will be able to find faint stations much easier. About SSB capabilities: it is usable but not great. If you are an avid SSB listener then you will be better served by any of the other members of the family; both my s8800 and h501x are perfect. The local oscillator is somewhat unstable and the pitch will be wobbly (perfect sounding person will would like Donald Duck in seconds). There are some undocumented settings and features. Some are useful, some not. In particular: the product detector for AM. It is available, it is awful. But you did not pay for it anyway… Other than that, the radio is solid. After 11 years I replaced the rechargeable lithium battery a couple of times, the antenna became a little wobbly and recently the main tuning knob failed. As there are several ways to tune it the radio is still operational. I have had several radios (Gundig, Tecsun, XhData, Hammarlund among others). If I had to have only one, this is the one I would take.

タイトル通り、非常に気に入りました。欠点はバッテリーが特殊な事ぐらい。 このラジオ、チューニングダイアル、ファインチューニングダイアル、ボリュームコントロールが 右端にまとめて配置され、見ての通り、親指と人差し指でつまんで回せるタイプとなっています。 この配置とつまんで回せるという事が今のラジオでは非常に珍しく、使い勝手の向上に貢献しています。 Sonyの7600も所有していますが、使い勝手でPL880の方が気に入っています。 今、買うべきBCLラジオはこれです。

Excelente desempeño en onda corta y banda lateral, único con sintonía fina de dos dígitos. Cumple lo que promete. Lo mejor de todo es poder cambiar la frecuencia sin que se vaya el audio o los molestos “chuff” o sonidos de cambio de frecuencia. Podrían mejorar el rendimiento de la batería que aunque es recargable el consumo es alto. En general muy buen equipo para dxers.

I think I have bought this radio by mistake - I'm not sure if it is configured for UK - it does not pick up any AM stations - FM is fine - SW is not good.

Has very good reception on AM , FM and Amateur radio bands with SSB (Single side band ) . I have not used the memory feature yet but like the timed turn off because it helps me fall asleep and the radio turns off. I had to pick a 5 volt charging device but it does come with a mini USB plug in cord. It comes with a plug in external wire antenna and ear buds. Has a good instruction manual and a zippered leatherette carrying case . It has an easy to see display screen . I have had no reason to use the telescoping antenna yet as it has great reception for a small radio. It's approximately 7 1/2 inches (19 cm ) by 4 1/2 " ( 11 cm ) by 1 1/4 " ( 3 cm ) thick.

Good as expected.