Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Radio: Sangean 909X in black, purchased new from Amazon on 5-28-15 for $224.67. I have listened to short wave broadcasts since I was a kid in the early 1960s and have owned and used many radios, including the Collins designed R-390A and Hammarlund SP-600 tube type communications receivers which I still have in use. I have an obsolete Sangean 606 which is half the size of the 909X and has the same frequency coverage without many of the more advanced features of the 909X. I spent a few weeks reading reviews of portable FM/MW/SW radios before picking up the Sangean 909X. The deciding factors were available features and Sangean build quality. My Sangean 606X endured 16 years of heavy use. Although the wall wart AC power supply died a year ago that old radio still works perfectly on batteries. That is saying a lot about Sangean quality. Sangean Electronics designs radios in Taiwan and builds them in mainland China. The operating instructions book is clearly written and informative. FM performance. This is an outstanding FM radio whether using the included speaker or stereo headphones. RDS scrolls station generated ID and program information on the display. FM sensitivity is very good on the whip antenna. I heard a little 8.5 kW FM station located 85 miles away in the middle of the afternoon. MW (AM broadcast band) reception. This is a dynamite AM radio. The 909X has an excellent built-in ferrite bar antenna. The antenna is strongly directional so the radio should be rotated for best reception of weak signals. During evening listening not far from Sacramento, CA I can easily receive KOMO in Seattle, KNX in Los Angeles and KTWO in Caspar, WY. The ferrite antenna is so good that my 120' long wire antenna rarely beats it. SW (shortwave) reception. Performance with the included 3'10" whip antenna is very good and exceptionally good with long wire antennas. The included Sangean ANT-60 is a 23' long wire antenna that reels up into a portable spool. It will outperform the whip antenna on SW. My 120' outdoor long wire antenna outperforms the ANT-60 by a huge margin on SW. The more antenna you have the better SW reception will be on a well designed radio. IF RF gain control is set to MAX the 120' long wire will overload the 909X front end on a few very strong SW signals. RF overload will cause a crackling sound from the speaker or mute the radio completely. To clear an RF overload, tune the 909X up or down a kHz or two and turn the RF gain control way down. Then return to the strong station and turn up the RF gain until the signal strength meter shows no more than 9 or 10 on the SS scale. The 909X has wide/narrow IF filters from which to choose. From what I can tell the wide filter is about 6 kHz and the narrow filter is about 4 kHz. The wider filter provides better sound and the narrow filter provides more selectivity but at the cost of audio quality. Use this switch in conjunction with the fine tuning control for best results. In 99% of the instances when I want to reduce interference from nearby stations the wide filter works just fine. Just use fine tuning to move 1 or 2 kHz to either side of the frequency you want to hear. The interference will disappear or will be greatly reduced. If not, then try the narrow filter and tune off frequency by a smaller amount. There are no less than five different ways to tune a station on the 909X and I use them all. I have already entered several MW and SW station frequencies I use often into Memory Tuning. Many of the station entries pre-loaded into the SW memory are not useful or out of date but this is to be expected. The list does include many entries that work for me, though. Any comprehensive station list is outdated three months after it is compiled. I look forward to updating these lists as I gain more experience using the 909X in my geographic area. When not using Memory Tuning I don't want to see a country name on the LCD display all of the time. So, I bring up page 29 which displays the word OPTIONAL on the screen. Maybe I'll edit that to read HI THere or HAVE A GOOD DAY sometime in the future. SSB reception for listening to amateur radio voice operation works very well and is switchable for upper/lower sideband. During the first evenings of SWL'ing I heard easy pickings (for me) like Radio Australia, Radio New Zealand, China Radio International and Radio Havana Cuba. I also heard Radio Marti, a Brazilian station I haven't ID'd yet, Voice of Korea (North Korea), BBC, Radio Vietnam and Radio Romania International. All stations were English language broadcasts. All could be heard well with the whip antenna but came in better with a long wire antenna. Too bad BBC is so hard to find on SW. It was all over the dial years ago. There were only a few things I didn't like about the 909X and these are minor inconveniences. Two issues are related to the RF gain control. The AC power plug is located too close to this control and gets into the way of using the control wheel. The MAX position on the control wheel is smooth faced offering no tactile feedback to let the user know when the MAX setting is dialed. As a result I always have to look around at the RF gain control on the side of the radio to confirm if the setting is correct. The other problem occurs after editing station information for a MW/SW Memory Tuning entry. Doing so will change audio tone quality on the radio. Switching to the other AM band setting (SW or MW) and back again will clear this and return the radio audio to normal. Features I really like include the quality feel of the case and controls, switchable IF bandwidth for MW/SW, the LCD display that stays lit when AC power is in use, placement of the fine tuning step switch in the center of the tuning wheel (ingenious!), RF gain control and Memory Tuning. And the 909X in black is super sharp-looking. I can't imagine hearing a better sounding speaker from any multi band radio of this size. The sound from all bands including SW with Sennheiser HD-280 Pro headphones is superb. The Sangean 909X is a well-built, excellent performing and attractive radio. Given the versatility of its many features it is surprisingly easy to use. All it takes is a little time spent using it with the instruction book handy. I paid a more for the Sangean 909X than I could have with other portables out there but I got what I paid for and I'm very happy with the choice. One year update: submitted as an edit on 6-4-2016... I have used the Sangean ATS-909X almost every day for a year. I usually use the radio at home with an external long wire antenna for SW reception but I also listen frequently to MW (the AM broadcast band) and FM. The radio looks like new and still works perfectly after a year. I have used it a lot. This radio is built like a battleship. I use rechargeable Eneloop AA batteries charged inside the 909X. All multiband portable radios have their individual advantages and drawbacks. There is only one drawback for the 909X: the SW sensitivity is mediocre when using the whip antenna. Use the 909X with an external wire antenna and SW sensitivity is excellent, as good if not better than any SW portable in current production. Anyone serious about SW listening on any of the better portables will be using an external antenna eventually. I really like the SW selectivity. The two ceramic IF filters chosen for the 909X are very effective against near channel interference. The 6 kHz "wide" filter will do the job for 99% of the stations you listen to. Filter skirts are sharply defined. I also use a well maintained Hammarlund SP-600 JX-21 for shortwave listening, one of the top industrial/military communications receivers from the tube era. With the same antenna there aren't many stations that the SP-600 can hear that the 909X can't. The audio quality from the 909X is top in its class. Audio output is a full 1 watt as opposed to less than 1/2 watt from the Tecsuns. This is a radio after all, and audio quality matters. The top features of 909X that I like particularly well... superb SW performance with an external wire antenna. A real RF gain control with a potentiometer as a control: this radio will not overload with a longwire antenna. A bright, easy to use LCD display with a unique 12-element S-meter. Recharges Panasonic AA Eneloop batteries inside the radio. A versatile SW station memory that is easily customized and updated by the user. I use the memory pages a lot to scan for SW stations. I keep the memory listings updated with fresh frequency information and have used the editing feature to make pages for countries not included with the factory default memory pages. Excellent audio on all bands. What SW stations do I listen to on the Sangean? These are English language stations I can usually hear on a daily basis here in Northern Caifornia. BBC World Service (morning and evenings). BBC doesn't target North America anymore but I hear their Eastern Asia and Southern Africa broadcasts fine on the Sangean. Radio China International. Radio Havana Cuba. Radio Romania. Voice of Turkey. Vatican Radio. Voice of Korea (North Korea). Voice of Vietnam. Voice of Greece. Radio New Zealand and Radio Australia are heard for nearly 18 hours a day during the summer. Other SW station I hear once in a while or non-English broadcasters with good music... Radio Argentina. Radio National Brazil. All India Radio. Various Indonesian stations. Saudi Radio. Central African Republic. Various Colombian stations. Radio Taiwan International. Radio Japan. Voice of America. Many religious or ranter broadcasters active on SW. There are also US commercial SW stations like WTWW and WRMI. There are a lot of other SW stations I haven't looked for yet but that's part of fun. You can't go wrong with this radio for SW if you set up a simple external wire antenna. The included ANT-60 roll-up random wire SW antenna works very well and I use it often when traveling. FM reception on the whip antenna is just plain unbeatable in its class. MW (AM broadcast band) performance is very good but not as good as some of the larger Sangean AM/FM radios which are the top AM performers featuring larger ferrite bar antennas. I'll admit that I haven't used the LW (long wave) band very much. There isn't much LW activity to be heard here on the West Coast anymore except for some beacons. So ends this review of the Sangean ATS-909X. I wrote a book but heck, anyone who pays $150 to $220 for an exotic multiband portable should make an informed choice.