SIHUADON D808 Portable Radio Transistor AM FM SW LW SSB Air Band Multiband Radio Loudspeaker Alarm Clock Sleep Timer Black

Product Information

Is it possible to read dBµV / dB SNR instead of 1st temperature, 2nd alarm and 3rd time before the meter? It is a radio so it should read the signal strenght indicator first as you switch on the radio! The manual claims that the D-808 can’t be charged when it’s on but I found that’s not quite true–it sure takes much more time but I could top off a slightly discharged battery just fine.

FM stereo / MW / LW/ SW SSB and Air Band radio with high sensitivity, good selectivity, and user-operation friendly Portable SW radios might be a highly niche product now but given the technology available and how long Sangean has been making radios, there’s no excuse for some of their choices or the missing “wow” factor I got as I scanned through the SW bands. SIHUADON has also taken on board comments from all parties on the screen and has made improvements”. 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 (part Battery life is a real pain in the ass. When I put a fully charged battery on it, (original or Panasonic ) in three days with no use at all it is dead. So you have to take battery out when not in use, or use an external battery always.So particularly on LSB, the offset on my D-808 varies quite a bit over the entire coverage range but I think this is within the allowable tolerance for such a radio. The PL-660 has slightly better results but it also has a center-indented fine-tuning knob making small corrections quite difficult. In AM mode they are both spot on. Despite being mentioned in the Operations Guide, there is no key for that. The D-808 was designed with automatic charging and management of the installed battery. Great review. Would be interesting if you tested them both with a passive MW loop as I find that the xhdata is rejecting signals rather then enhancing them and raising the noise floor, whereas the Tecsun pl-880 will accept the tuned passive loop.

There is much room for improvement though – for example the slightly borked control of the DSP, the chuffing/tuning and AGC issues on SSB let the D-808 miss the title “most stunning cheap little radio ever” by a hair.

D-808 Manual

To “a newer and faster DSP chip to speed up mode changes”: The D-808 is a Si4734/Si4735/Si4732 chip receiver. Other radios of this type are the very cheap chinese ATS-20 and ATS-25 or the well known brands radios Tecsun PL-310ET, PL-365, PL-360, PL-380, PL-880, Degen DE1103 DSP, DE1123, DE1126, Sangean ATS-909X, C Crane CC Skywave and Radiwow R-108.

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?Looking to the publicly available pictures, extensive changes were made in the circuit diagram and PCB layout of the Receiver board. As for shortwave, again it’s deaf as a post, I tuned in to Shannon Volmet on 5505 USB. I couldn’t hear anything at all on the telescopic antenna, I tried it on the long wire, then you could hear it very faintly. 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.

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.Using the D-808 again after a few years reminded me that this little China-made receiver offers no less than SEVEN bandwidths, in AM mode. Let me say that again: SEVEN (7) bandwidths. 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! I love reading a well-prepared review of shortwave radios especially those of multiband portables with SW. This comparative review of the D-808 and the PL-660 is outstanding. The 808 was and still is compared to the CCrane Skywave SSB, a much smaller and compact receiver. Unfortunately, in my experience both suffer from soft muting.