Thanks, Ante, for sending us Mischa's review of the $25 Tecsun R-9710:
I just joined this group, though I have been reading it already for the last few months. I am from The Netherlands and have collected quite a number of ultralights over the last 2 years or so.
One of them is the Tecsun R9710, which is essentially an R911/R912, but with dual conversion on shortwave and without the 60 and 75 meter bands. Since it is quite hard to find reviews on this radio, I'll share my impressions here.
As to the R9710's appearance: it looks more or less the same as the R911/R912 series. Coverage is FM (87 - 108 Mhz), MW (525 - 1710 Khz) and 8 SW bands (49, 41, 31, 25, 22, 19, 16 and 13 meters). Which is a pity, in a way: I would love this radio with a 60 and 75 meter band added. Sometimes I don't understand the radio manufacturers: why does Tecsun release an R912 with 75 to 13 meter bands, and an R9710, with a good feature like dual conversion, but without these 2 additional bands? It feels like a cross between these radios would be perfect. I guess they need our money, so releasing the perfect radio is not really an option for them;) (since they would not sell any more radios after that).
Regarding the performance:
FM is a lot better than the FM on my R911. I have two R911's, both with very poor FM performance. With the R9710 I receive most stations that my Sangean PR-D5 also receives, just a few less. Through the speaker, the sound on FM is OK, but through headphones you get a VERY impressive sound: very balanced in terms of bass and treble and good stereo separation. Frankly, if confronted with this kind of headphone output, with my eyes closed, I would not believe it comes from such a tiny radio. I use some really simple Tecsun earplugs. Really enjoyable!
I haven't dared to align the MW so far, from fear of breaking the connection to the whip antenna (which I unfortunately did with one of my R911's). But still, the MW is quite good unaligned. From The Netherlands, I receive stations from as far as Italy, Spain and Slovenia with it when it's dark, which is fine for me (I'm more of a SW-listener) .
On SW, the performance is very decent for such a small and inexpensive analog. Of course, radios like the Kaito 1102 and the Tecsun PL660 are better, both in selectivity and sensitivity. But for this size and price, it's good. To give an idea: yesterday, we enjoyed very favorable conditions here at night. I managed to receive BBC World Service on SW on both their Ascension and Singapore frequencies. I could also receive India, Iran, Radio Netherlands on their South-American frequency and I even got Radio Argentina quite clear. All using the whip antenna. As mentioned, conditions were very good, but still: I was really impressed.
As to the dual conversion: it should keep away most images. Usually, it does the trick. But sometimes, China Radio International is present on the background in the whole 41 meter band. It is a very strong signal at my location. Touching the whip with my fingers (and keeping it touched) fixes this, however.
All in all: a really nice ultralight. For the price and size, its performance exceeds my expectations. Only a shame that those 60 and 75 meter bands are missing...
Regards,
Mischa
Haha! I was pleasantly surprised to find my review back here:). As an addition: yesterday I noticed a really faint signal on the R9710 (barefoot again) in the 16m band. The only thing that I could make of it was that the language was definitely Portuguese and that they also played some music (this was around 2050 UTC).
I decided to fire up my Tecsun PL660, under the assumption that I would be able to get a much more decent signal out of it and possibly identify the station. I couldn't be more surprised when I found that I could not get the signal any better than on the R9710, not even using sync. To my ears, the 'quality' was the same. This speaks for the R9710!
Using the 660, I was able to identify the precise frequency however, this turned out to be 17690 kHz. Looking this up on the Internet, I found no definitive answer as to the ID of the station. Perhaps anyone has more info here?
Posted by: Mischa | March 16, 2011 at 08:47 AM
http://thechive.com/2011/03/16/gadget-girl-the-sangean-fatbox-radio/
Good video review of the Sangean Fatbox
Posted by: Chris | March 16, 2011 at 08:08 PM
sony ICF-7601 includes the bands missing, 60.75.90.120 but not 160 which to be fair there arent broadcasters on but good AM activity in the winter by hams. i found one for about 30 or 40 on ebay
Posted by: carmen | March 18, 2011 at 01:25 AM
This is a fantastic little radio.
It receives very well on all the bands.
And it has FM stereo.
However this sound from the little speaker quickly distorts.
But I have to say my prefered all time favorite analogue radio is the Sony icf-sw10/ sw11. This
Receives very well on all the bands, the speaker audio is very pleasant, it has FM stereo and receives on the LW band (and is amazingly sensitive on this band). I have a ton of radios and this is my best so far.
Posted by: Stephane Schmitz | March 01, 2022 at 01:10 PM