Joined in 2023 
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Soft mute. The dreaded soft mute is present in AM and SSB mode to some degree, but I do not feel it is excessive. Like most radio hobbyists I’m not a fan of soft muting and prefer uninterrupted tuning with no sign of “chuffing” or lowering of noise or audio. The amount of soft mute on this radio seems the same as the Eton Executive Satellit in my opinion. The second pair of digits is a crude calculation of receiver (not audio!) SNR, which can be useful in conjunction with the signal strength meter, e.g. for adjusting or comparing antennas and so on, and it works best with AM and FM signals. Both receivers are generally very stable and don’t exhibit a noticeable warm-up drift. Just to see what happens, I took the D-808 from a very warm apartment into cold (-5°C/28F) and stormy weather outside. The internal (and very slow changing) thermometer of the D-808 indicated an internal temperature drop of 12°C within 10 minutes and if there was a drift at all, it drifted less than 10Hz. The circuit of the input circuits seemed not very successfu. It does a good job of reconciling with a telescopic antenna, but does not filter at all:
batteries have a very high energy density at a very low weight, and in the D-808 they meet a radio with a very moderate power consumption. As a result, the provided 2,000mAh battery powered the radio continuously for remarkable 32 hours, 14 of them with the display light on! For comparison, the heavier (and more expensive) 2,500mAh Ni-MH batteries in my PL-660 last for 24 hours only.Nevertheless, combined with SIX bandwidth options when in SSB, the fine tuning option on the 808 is a superb feature, not to mention that on my particular D-808 there is little to no “warbling” when carrying out the fine tune operation. I guess I’ll keep tossing my 7600 in my bags when I head overseas. Was really hoping that Sangean had a radio that would allow me to retire my Sony. The buttons are barely raised beyond the surface of the radio, and operating the radio by touch is difficult.
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.
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. What about single sideband? These four videos show reception in AM mode only, but rest assured the D-808 is very capable on the SSB modes of LSB and USB! A separate fine tuning rotary wheel on the right side of the radio’s case offers adjustment in 10 Hertz increments. The effect feels very similar to tuning CountyComm’s GP-5/SSB “walkie-talkie” style receiver. The plus or minus (+/-) offset is displayed in multiples of 10 Hz steps as “-1”, “-2”, “-3”, and so on. AM bandwidth control on the ATS-909×2 is quite nice. However, what leaps out is the absence of multi-bandwidth capability in SSB mode. It’s baffling that Sangean seems not to have recognized this as a must-have feature. To “It’s doubtful that XHDATA or some other manufacturer will consider competing directly with Tecsun and Sangean”: My Sony 7600GR is one of the best portable analog dual conversion radio receivers. I think there are more then one thousand components in the housing. Because of this low level of integration the radios of different brands were different. My ATS-20 has less then one hundred components – and I assume that the other Si47xx radios have the same number of components. Because of this there is no much difference between a no-name D-808 and a Tecsun if both use a Si47xx. Li-Ion battery. Not all may agree, but I like this style of battery. The D-808’s internal circuit shuts off when the battery is fully charged, or after 10 hours of charging. The radio comes with a 18650 battery and a USB cable; the owner supplies a common 5V USB charger.
It’s doubtful that XHDATA or some other manufacturer will consider competing directly with Tecsun and Sangean. But the D-808 carved out a place for itself in the small portable category, at an extremely competitive price point.The review states the PL-660 doesn’t save bandwidth and other settings when storing in memory. Mine does. It stores USB/LSB, bandwidth and even Sync settings. Maybe this happened with later firmware versions. Every company that’s still manufacturing receivers makes its own decisions. It’s as important that we voice our gratitude to Sangean for its latest (possibly last) effort to revise the 909xxxx series as it is to Tecsun for offering no fewer than THREE superb world band receivers. As this was not an exhaustive retro review of the D-808, I have not gone into the various negatives that every D-808 owner knows to exist. About SSB: I think that this receiver is better than the [Tecsun] PL-880 and comparable to the PL-660. I also use a Marantz PM5005 integrated amp to route audio to bookshelf speakers with great results, but all amps connected to ac supply will not work, they need to have very clean power supply so as to not introduce noise and signal interference.
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