SANGEAN ATS-909X2, Ultimate FM/SW/MW/LW/Air Multi-Band Radio

With such a wide range of bands to explore, there’s a lot to like about this radio. Mine, however, had a faulty antenna circuit. When you’d plug in an antenna (I tried 2) the volume on a shortwave or AM station already receivable without an external antenna would drop by 50% when using the AC adapter. The volume drop was even worse when using batteries. At first I thought perhaps there was an internal/external antenna switch that had to be adjusted but I saw nothing like that on the unit or referenced in the instruction book. This was very disappointing because I got it for a great Amazon price. Thankfully Amazon makes returns very simple. I may try ordering this item again, provided inflation and the ongoing supply chain issues don’t drive the price too high. Round Two (Update August 27, 2022) With a number of months having passed since trying my first 909X2, I felt it was time to reorder. When the radio arrived I installed 4 alkaline batteries, strung the included wire antenna across my basement ceiling and got to work. The first order of business was to see how the antenna input would work on shortwave. Given my location (the basement), I felt the wire antenna did very well on this second radio. It didn’t drop the volume at all like it did with the first one. Secondly, the radio worked even better with my Godar DXR-1000 antenna that I have yet to have installed on the house. This antenna is designed for use with 75 ohm coax. (An adapter is needed to connect coax to the 909X2.) So it appears that this set is capable of operating quite well with a varied range of antennas. Unfortunately there’s bad news. This radio has a scanning feature that allows you to quickly jump from one meter band to another. This feature didn’t work on mine. At a certain point when trying to set this feature up the meter band indicator is supposed to flash but it wouldn’t. I even tried resetting the radio and it just wouldn’t work. Another suspicious issue involved the tuning wheel. Initially it wouldn’t work at all. I did a reset and from then on the wheel worked as it should. How long it would have continued to operate is anyone’s guess. Btw…my radio’s firmware was version 073. For these reasons, this radio also went back. I wanted to give Sangean an opportunity to impress me as much as they have via their WR-11 wood table radio. With the exception of the severely narrow-banded AM sound, it’s a nice radio. In my opinion, this radio and it’s siblings would be the best table sets on the market if Sangean would see fit to include a wide-band/narrow-band switch for AM on the back. In fact, the WR-11 outperforms my GE Superadio when both radios are operated using the CCrane twin coil ferrite antenna. So…2 faulty 909X2 sets in a row. Hopefully your purchase experience will be better. April 2024 Update: Firmware One of the first things I did was to check the firmware version. 078 is the latest and I was pleased to see that mine is from this batch. Antennas This radio seems to prefer higher impedance antennas when connecting through the 3.5mm antenna jack. Lower Impedance antennas work better when attaching them via alligator clip to the telescoping antenna. Tuning Tuning is executed via a ridged thumb wheel that is flush with the face of the radio. The idea is that as you hold the radio, you can extend your right thumb and spin the wheel to tune. On the left side of the wheel there are two seek/scan bars, the upper one is for tuning up while the lower one handles moving down the spectrum. There’s also an interesting “step” button in the middle of the tuning wheel. Pressing this button changes the length of the tuning steps for both the tuning wheel as well as the seek/scan bars. Hold it for about a full second and it disables the tuning wheel. I suspect I unknowingly engaged this feature on my second radio and ended up thinking that this was one of the things that was wrong with it. When it happened again on my current radio, I dove back into the manual and found out about the disable feature but fail to see its purpose. I thought maybe this was added so in case you leave the room for some reason, your kids or grandkids can’t come along and accidentally move you off frequency. What I find unusual is that this function doesn’t also disable the keypad or the tuning bars. AM Reception In a word: terrific. So far the best reception occurs when I use a Tecsun AN-48X amplified antenna. When used on a camera tripod to allow for directional focus, this antenna is a great indoor reception option. During a nighttime band scan, from 540kHz up to about 1200kHz there was a station (or stations) to be heard every 10kHz. After that the band was very crowded but some great DX still came through. From my Midwest location I was receiving many stations from Canada to Texas and the Deep South to the East coast. So as far as AM is concerned, this radio/antenna combination is a winner! FM Reception My 909X2 picked up 53 stations off the whip antenna. That’s 5 short of the record at my location which is held by my CCrane CCRadio3. Nonetheless, that is exceptional. SW Reception I’m not a collector of SW radios so I won’t be providing comparisons with other brands. However, I’m surprised by those who claim there’s little to listen to on SW, or worse yet, that this radio is deaf on SW. In the latter case, there may be a reason for that and it has nothing to do with a faulty radio. The manual clearly states that you need to have the gain control turned up to “Max” in order to hear anything on SW. Utilizing the Tecsun AN-48X antenna, during one listening session I picked up 23 stations in an area of the spectrum ranging from 4.84 to 9.71MHz SSB Reception When you come across what might appear to be a SSB transmission in SW mode, press the SSB button. Continue to press this button and you’ll see in the display that it toggles between AM, lower sideband (LSB) and upper sideband (USB). The manual indicates that amateur radio operators transmitting below 10MHz generally use the lower sideband while amateur and commercial stations transmitting above that frequency generally use the upper sideband. Choose the sideband that gives the best reception. Next, press the step button in the middle of the rotary tuning wheel that I referenced earlier to select the slow stepping mode. Then rotate the rotary tuning wheel to fine tune the voice transmission. The minimum fine tuning steps are set at 20Hz by default. This can be changed via the menu to 10Hz. Some folks complain because the radio has only one preset bandwidth for SSB. I’m fine with that because the one they chose sounds very clear to me. Still others complain because they say the SSB volume is very low compared to regular shortwave transmissions. Assuming they have the RF gain jog wheel at max where it should be, you still should expect lower volume because obviously you’re only receiving the energy from one side band. Yes, there’s a difference in volume, but on my radio it’s certainly not objectionable. Birdies and Breakthrough In 3 months of occasional usage thoroughly going through AM, FM and SW, I’ve yet to experience any birdies. However, on one occasion when using the Tecsun antenna I did experience some low volume breakthrough on SW in spots from approximately 2.2 to 2.7MHz. 2.3MHz is the second harmonic of a local, high power AM station whose tower site is about 15 miles away so this interference isn’t surprising. If this is happening to you, simply divide the frequency where it’s occurring (in kHz) by 2 and that should give you the approximate frequency of the offending station. I should add that this “breakthrough” didn’t occur when using the built-in telescopic antenna. Later in the day, and using the Tecsun antenna once again, I tuned through this range because this particular station reduces it’s power post sunset. The power reduction did lower the number and intensity of the incidents. While people may assume the radio is being overloaded by the amplified antenna, It could actually be spurious emissions from the station. The only way to know for sure would be to contact the engineer of the station. Battery Power Details I’m using rechargeable batteries. In their pre-charged state, straight from the package, they gave me about 10 hours of listening time. Recharging the batteries took over 4 hours on the radio’s built in charger and I’m assuming the play time moving forward will be even better. This radio is unique in that it not only tells you via the screen when the batteries need recharging or are finished with the charging process, it also informs you if one of the batteries is faulty. Conclusion There is so much this radio can be set up to do. There’s nearly 2 full pages in the manual just on using, storing, recalling, locking, deleting, moving and renaming preset stations. There’s also the ability to scan only within specific meter bands, the use of 3 alarm timers, how to use the record standby/line-out jacks, squelch, automatic bandwidth and much more. In the end, while it was frustrating having to deal with two faulty radios to get one that works right, I’m glad I stuck with it. I’m enjoying this one very much and I hope you enjoy yours too!

This is a superb radio. I'm a ham radio operator and have used a lot of radios, including the predecessor of this one. The original Sangean 909 has always been a pleasant radio to use with a lot of nice features, but had been lacking in a few key areas, including sensitivity. This is all fixed with the version 2, and now this radio is the complete package of nice operation and great performance. On my first night, I already spent a few hours listening in on 80m in SSB, all with the built-in whip. AM and FM are also great and the sound quality is very good. Update: After a few days and nights with the radio, I like it even more. Originally I was a bit disappointed that they did not add a synch detector. But it turns out that ECSS works impressively well on this radio. (ECSS is a fancy term for listening to AM broadcast stations in single side band mode, to remove audio distortions caused by signal fading). In fact it works better than synch detectors on many other radios, as there is no need for a synch detector to "lock on". Just switch to SSB if you have a weak or fading station, and it becomes very stable, and audio quality is good. Update 2: I had the chance now to directly compare this radio with the latest Tecsun PL-990. Here are my observations. All based on using the built-in whip antenna. - On 49m in AM mode, in the evening: Signals are weak here on the west coast in general, but both radios make the best of it. There was no station that one radio received that I could not also hear on the other. The sound quality is quite similar. The noise floor on the Tecsun is perhaps a bit better, and weak signals very slightly more understandable. While the Sangean subjectively sounds better, especially when the signals are a bit stronger. Overall I would say it is a tie. I'd be happy with either one of them. - Still on 49m, listening to AM broadcast stations, but now switching to single side band mode. The Tecsun has a Synch detector mode for this. Turning it on first results in several seconds of silence (audio muted), while the display shows some kind of "busy" icon. This is annoying, and it soon gets old when switching forth and back often. Once the Synch detector is finally on, the sound becomes muffled, and slightly distorted. The Sangean does not have a Synch mode, so I use LSB directly (kind of a manual ECSS, as described above). In this mode, the sound is great, and clearly beats the Tecsun here. The Tecsun allows to switch bandwidths in SSB and Synch modes. Even with the widest bandwidth of 4kHz, the sound is still muffled. The Sangean only provides a single bandwidth in SSB mode, a fact that originally irked me. But whatever bandwidth Sangean implemented here, it sounds very good! - Next up, let's listen to ham radio stations on 80m in SSB. Here, the Tecsun shows the same muffled sound I observed above. In addition, there is more distortion now. It appears to me that the beginning of each transmission (the first syllable spoken by the ham) is being clipped in the RF amp by the Tecsun. This would mean that they have AGC turned on in SSB mode, and with a pretty short time constant at that. Not good! The Sangean sounds cleaner and smoother here. It has manual gain control via a small wheel on the left side, as it should be. In addition, I noticed that the Sangean appears to be very slightly more sensitive. When listening in on a ham radio "ragchew" with stations across America, I could follow all of them on the Sangean (albeit with some difficulty for the weakest ones), while weak stations on the Tecsun occasionally dropped out. Mind you, this difference was very slight. In most cases, both radios performed the same. Overall though, just based on sound and distortion, this point goes to Sangean. - I also tried the 20m ham radio band during the day. Findings were very similar to what I described above on 80m, except both radios were really equally sensitive now. - Some remarks on the physical aspects and operation of these radios: The Tecsun is noticeably more compact, which is really nice! I also preferred the tuning and volume wheels on the right, over the Sangean. These controls on the Tecsun are pleasant to operate, with one thumb if needed. The volume control on the Sangean needs to be gripped with thumb and index finger to operate, and the tuning dial on the front is workable, but not my cup of tea. I also liked that the Tecsun allows to turn on the display backlight permanently when desired. On the other hand, the buttons on the Sangean are bigger and more pleasant to operate, and it has the large display. The whip antenna is larger and a lot more sturdy! The last element on the whip antenna of the Tecsun is very flimsy indeed and I almost bent it already after just one hour of operation. You need to be very gentle with it. - As for features: The Sangean has RDS and the air band, while the Tecsun has an MP3 player and bluetooth. It depends here what your preference is. The sound quality of both radios on FM is very good. I did not compare them on the AM broadcast band yet, maybe in another update. Overall, both radios are very good and I'd be happy with either one, but I'd give the edge to the Sangean.

This radio had mixed reviews when it came out so I intentionally bought this from Amazon in case there were issues. Turns out to be a great radio and it’s a keeper as far as I am concerned. I purchased this right before Christmas and have the latest firmware (73) so that might explain while mine works well compared to earlier reviews.. Not sure though. One of the main complaints on this radio is that it has low audio on SSB. First thing I did when I got the unit was to test for this issue and here is what I have found: Yes with a weak signal, you may notice this. But with a normal or strong signal this does not happen. The bathroom off of my hallway is the most central room in my house and is a dead zone and great room for testing. In my bathroom on the whip antenna, I could notice the audio go noticeably lower when switching to SSB. I then walked in my backyard and still on the whip/same station and it did not do this because I had a stronger signal outside. I then made a longwire antenna that runs along the eve of my house into my bedroom . On this antenna I have never experienced this SSB audio issue. The other common complaint that I do agree with and consider it a big oops is the lack of filter selection on SSB. On AM, it has 5 different filters to choose from but only 1 on SSB. Not sure why but for the price, it should have more. That said, the one it has works well for SSB - not too wide, not too narrow. Last oops: Sangean was an early adopter of RDS and had it years before just about anyone else. I know they had it by the mid 90’s so why in the heck does this thing not show RDS time/date data? The ⅓ the price XHDATA 808 has this feature so this is another oversight. Despite what I have said about SSB, I will say this radio has some of the best SSB audio I have heard. Yes that is very subjective so let me say it is very clear and the kind you can listen to for hours without getting “tired”. The Tecsun 880 also has excellent audio but it gets distorted on strong signals and the 909x2 does not do that. The 909x2 also appears to be more sensitive (on SWL) over the 880 in my bathroom tests and seems to tie the XHDATA D808. Again, my tests are very subjective but at least I know this radio is not deaf by any means. Features: basically functionality is pretty intuitive. You can change frequencies by using buttons, the dial or the keypad. Storing a frequency in memory is easy as well once you play with it a bit and learn their system. But some of the more advanced features require reading the manual but it is NOT HARD once you read the manual. Now they do gloss over some details like the fact the radio has 3 memory banks. If I had not read the Amazon ad, I would have never known this because it’s only briefly mentioned in the manual and you have to enter a sub menu to access it. Not hard, just got to read the manual to enjoy the radio to the fullest. Looks-Feel-Quality I am more of a function over form person but I will say this is a very attractive radio. It at least appears to be of higher quality than any of my other radios (Tecsuns and XHDATA). It is not cheap plastic like the Chinese brands and the Antenna is much better quality than what the Chinese provide. The buttons look and feel better and the radio is much heavier . The LCD is very large and easy to read, by far the best display I have. The front of the radio reminds me of some high end Sony from their heyday and the top reminds me of my grandfather's Trans-Oceanic from the late 60’-early 70’s . The bad side of this is the radio is too nice to be a constant travel companion- vacations are fine just not all the time. . If I was someone who travels a lot , I would bring a smaller Tecsun or Xhdata in case it was lost/stolen or damaged . They are much smaller in both price and size and I would not feel as bad if something happened. This radio is at home in your shack or by your bedside on your night stand and that is exactly how I use it. Button line: The only reason I would think of returning this radio is the fact that Amazon has dropped the price $30 since Christmas and I am still within the return period . But I know I have a good one and I am happy with it., If you have any reservations about the radio, just buy it from Amazon so there is no risk if you have any issues.

I actually bought 2 of these radios from Amazon. The first one looked great right out of the box. The device itself has many features and it takes a while to learn all of them. Within the first 2 days of owning this radio I noticed that the auto tuning bar would freeze up intermittently. At first I thought it had to do with a lock feature. It didn't. The control just bricked. Then suddenly it started to work again. Within 10 minutes it froze again. You get the idea.I called SANGEAN. The guy I spoke to was knowledgeable and tried to troubleshoot with me. Nothing he suggested worked. He said my best bet was to return it directly to Amazon. That's what I did. I really wanted this radio because even though many reviews said it had some issues, the good far outweighed the bad. I ordered a replacement so no refund was involved. It took over a week to get the new radio. When I opened the outer box the, the SANGEAN box inside looked a little rough. Fingerprint smudges and a little marked up on the edges. When I opened the box and took the radio out, I saw the LED Screen was actually dirty. It not only had fingerprints all over it, but actual crud ! So I proceeded to make excuses as to why a brand new radio could look like this and I put batteries in it and started to set it up. The antenna wasn't tight like a new one should be. The time had been already set ( not my time zone ). But then I really almost lost it when I realized that someone had preset stations into the memory. THIS radio was not only USED but someone had it for a while. This radio had a couple of dozen stations, SW AM FM all in presets. They were not any stations that I could get in my area. So you get the idea. I paid $250.00 including tax for a USED RADIO and the previous owner and Amazon did a lousy job trying to hide it. I am sending it back tomorrow and getting a refund this time. I'm debating on whether or not to try again and order a third. Update: I did order a third, NOT from Amazon. I paid $ 40.00 more but I am getting it from a Radio shop recommended to me by a service tech at SANGEAN. I just couldn't risk a third disappointment from Amazon.

I have been a ham radio enthusiast for over 40 years and a shortwave listener for even more. I've owned quite a few radios. This is my honest review after owning this radio for a year and a half. If you want a radio that does what this radio does, for a fraction of the price, go get a Tecsun PL-680. Is it as good as this Sangean? No. But it does perform quite well and you won't cry too hard if you damage or lose it when traveling. Big advantage of the 909X2: The Aviation band and in particular the squelch for aviation is Excellent. By the way, I'm also a private pilot. I have worked with a lot of portable aviation radios and this one sounds very good. I wish it had 8.33 kHz steps in case you travel to Europe, but otherwise it is still a very good aviation radio. AM performance is good --except that there is no synchronous detection. If the signal isn't suffering from selective fading (commonplace when listening to SW AM stations) the internal speaker sounds pretty nice. Not perfect, but better than average. Remember what I pointed out above about the PL-680? The '680 has synchronous detection. If you listen to it with good headphones (not the cheap earbuds they package with the '680) it sounds quite a bit better when selective fading happens. So, in general, the Sangean 909X2 sounds pretty good, but with the caveat that it may not sound that nice when conditions degrade. Sensitivity is good with 909X2 on SW and MW. It is generally better than other portable radios I have owned. However, it also picks up lots of internal noises. Some report that the noise goes away when you take your hands away from the display --and that's true. But not all the noises. Medium wave performance is okay for what it is. If you're really interested in good medium wave reception, I suggest you plug it in to a good antenna system or couple it with one of those inductively coupled tuned loops such as the AN-200. Long wave performance, is... sketchy. To be honest, this is true of most portables I have owned. If you're in an urban area, you may pick up some medium wave signals bleeding through. Again, an external antenna might make all the difference in the world, but you'll have to pay attention to using a decent preselector in front of it to avoid MW AM broadcasts bleeding into the LW spectrum. Sigh. For this kind of money I had hoped for better. Now for SSB performance. It's not awful. The unit I have could use a tune up so that the BFO and the filter are similarly aligned for LSB and USB. The audio level is inexplicably low. If you use SSB, be prepared to turn the volume almost all the way up and be in a relatively low noise area. Oh, and turn it down again before you switch to AM or you'll blast your ears out of the room. The tuning steps in SSB are quite precise. I can set it up for reception of AM signals with the carrier zero beat. Is it perfection? No. But its easier to work with than a BFO knob. Also the AGC isn't too bad on SSB. I have listened to hams on 40 and 75 meters and the audio doesn't drift, clip, or distort as it does with most other radios. The FM Broadcast performance is good too. I like the RDS feature, but I don't consider it essential. The banks of memories are interesting. When I travel I can set up a bank for each listening site so that I have some record of what I was listening to. The sad part is that there are only three of them. If you're patient, you can even punch in notes in memory of what each station memory was. Another note: the banks come pre-programmed with a lot of stations that sadly are no longer broadcasting on those frequencies. It would be nice if we could update the radio with new factory defaults. In all, it's not a bad radio. But the improvement in performance is lacking unless you're interested in Airband performance. For the price, I expect better. Please note that if you don't mind bringing a computer along, even a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5, you can purchase an Airspy HF+ for less money and get significantly better performance on LW, MW, SW and VHF --for about the same money after you've purchased a battery pack to power it all. I'm giving it four stars because I can't give it 3.5. Again, if the money is no issue, this is a very nice portable radio. But for $240 (with shipping), I expected better.

First I would like to say I really like this radio, the new version is an improvement over the old model. I find the audio quality is excellent, the new filters are superb, and SSB reception for the Ham bands is excellent. The older model ( 909x) had low sensitivity using the whip antenna for Shortwave and Ham Band reception, where this new model is more sensitive using the whip, a big improvement. A radio is supposed to sound good, right ? This one does sound good ! The previous model had somewhat " muddy audio " on AM and shortwave. In addition, I LOVE the air band sensitivity and audio quality of aircraft. Superb !! Now for some other observations. Firmware 070 may have some issues. I understand a new version is coming soon, but some observations I and others have experienced. 1. My frequency on SSB is off by 140 Hz on Lower Side band. 2. My frequency on SSB is off by 40 Hz on Upper side band. This is important if you are trying to receive Ham band signals. The audio even on a strong signal will sound " different " 3. Several people have experienced a strange behavior on AM and SSB when the radio is very close to a wi-fi router. It's as if the DSP chip in the radio gets swamped, and the audio suffers. A sample of this audio can be heard on " Dave's Radio Receiver Page " You just need to google it. Having said all this would I recommend it ? Absolutely ! I am very happy with the radio. The LCD screen and frequency numbers are a joy to look at. The build quality for a portable is very good, in my opinion. Lastly, I am NOT an employee of Sangean, and have NOT been paid to write this review. UPDATE : I had a problem with the " Quick Tuning " feature of this radio. Page 9 in the manual. ( press and hold enter, then simultaneously rotate the tuning knob ) This feature allows you to quickly tune and entire band in a few seconds. Problem was on SW, it would STAY in this mode, and I would have to go into the menu and do a re-set of the radio. This did NOT happen all the time, so it was not operator error. It happened often enough for me to return the radio. This is probably a firmware problem, Sangean needs to address this issue.

I received my Sangean ATX909X2 a couple weeks ago, and so far I love it! I waited a few weeks to write this review, to see how well I would like it, and to learn about it's main characteristics. I have a half a dozen other SW radios as well (Including Tecsun s8800, Pl-880, and Grundig 750, and others), and this is quickly becoming my favorite, easiest to use SW radio. I was at first leery of the rotating dial, being so used to knobs with all my previous radios. I quickly fell in love with the way the way this dial works...one handed with the step button in the middle is so intuitive and easy to use! The sound is very good and well balanced on all bands, and easily adjustable using the tone controls and/or bandwidth filters. It's not a boombox, but pleasant sounding and gets loud enough for what this is. The whip antenna is surprisingly good at picking up hams inside my home. The reported SSB volume drop is not that big of a deal for me, the low noise level in SSB compared to my other radios in SSB more than compensates for having to turn up the volume a bit. Also the fact that there is only one bandwidth on SSB is no biggie for me either, because I use the 3 tone controls to adjust as needed. My main listening area is in our Den/Computer room, which also has our WiFi/Modem unit, PC, and other devices which can normally cause interference. Because it's a portable, I can easily swivel on my chair, with the Sangean ATX909X2 in my hand, on my lap, to get the best reception if needed, even in this room. The Air band/scanning saved frequencies, is by far the best I've ever had in a portable radio, again, only using the whip antenna INSIDE my home (I do live about 30 mile west of O'hare airport). I did have the Eton Elite Executive, which also had awesome Air Band, but this one is even better! My unit is also has firmware 78, and I find no real issues so far. Get some AA rechargeable batts ( I recommend the Energizer ones, I've been using for 15 plus years), they work great, and when it needs a recharge, I just charge overnight plugged into the supplied wall wart. I also listen to AM/FM while plugged into the wall wart and don't notice any interference. Plugged in at night while listening to FM leaves the Display light on, so you can still constantly read the RDS info! (although I believe it doesn't charge the batteries until the unit is turned off). If I could have one wish for this portable, it would be for Weather Band...then it would be as close to a perfect radio for me as could be possible.

But an absolutely terrible SW and MW receiver! I'm a ham radio operator and was looking for a tabletop radio that would be helpful in a power outage. The first problem, the specs say, and the instructions confirm that if you install rechargeable batteries and "set the switch" to the proper setting, it will charge your batteries. IT DOES NOT! I bought some Hixon Li-ion rechargeable batteries, and they do not charge. Next, shortwave performance. Well, with the included whip antenna trying to pick up WWV on 10 MHz, I hear it, but it is not very strong. By comparison, my Belkay-DX and RSPduo, both using whip antennas, picked up a very strong signal. Switching to a magnetic loop antenna and plugging it into the Sangean AM external antenna plug, no improvement. Maybe this is just for the AM band, but AM reception did not improve. Using the same loop antenna on the Belkay-DX and RSPduo, the reception of WWV improved dramatically. In conclusion, I'll keep this for listening to FM radio, but that is about all. Maybe I received a defective unit. No response from support via their Website.

I bought the ATS-909X2 with firmware version 073. I also own a Panasonic RF-B65 and a Sony ICF-SW100 SW receivers. In my opinion over all - the Sangean equals or exceeds the performance of the older receivers. Pros - The display size and backlighting. The overall sound quality - comparable to the RF-B65. Sensitivity is on par or slightly better than the other receivers. The adjustable bandwith - missing on the older sets. Number of memories and longer alpha tags. Adjustable squelch for all bands - very nice on the aircraft band. No "chuffing" or audio muting while manually tuning ( Hooray!) Selectable tuning speeds. Multiple alarms and sleep timer. RDS decode on FM. S-Meter is the nicest of the 3 radios. Cons - Like some other reviews have pointed out placing your hand near the antenna causes interference from the display driver circuits. One shouldn't touch the antenna for proper operation anyway! Also the audio levels between AM, FM and SSB modes is rather large. Not a show stopper but annoying.... Overall this radio is my go-to for portable and casual listening. I won't get rid of my RF-B65 or the ICF-SW100 just yet, but they will not get as much use as they used to. While listening one afternoon I stumbled across an amateur station from the Galapagos Islands on the 12M ( 24MHz) amateur band. I tested all 3 radios to see how they compared. The 909X2 was the best. The sensitivity was equal to the Sony but the fine tuning was much better for SSB copy than the Sony. I went down to the ham shack and worked him. He was an S-5 on my Icom IC-7410 with a multi band fan dipole up at 25 feet. I had armchair copy of him on the 909X2 with just the telescopic antenna in my living room. Nice! You really will not find a better receiver unless you get an modern amateur radio with DSP or comparably priced dedicated communications receiver for much more money.

O rádio é bem completo, principalmente para quem pratica rádio escuta DX, além de ser um aparelho muito bonito e de excelente qualidade, consegui sintonizar várias rádios que antes não conseguia com outros aparelhos.

So well built,thought of just about every thing,it is a quality item,and well supported by Amazon.

Seems expensive but offers much cleaner FM reception; when compared to full analogue (Sony P26) or DSP radios (Tecsun PL660, Sangean SR35) at the same location. Build quality shows in the hefty case build and LCD panel.

EN MI OPINIÓN ES UNA RADIO GENIAL SU SENSIBILIDAD EN AM ME ENCANTA, ES MUY CARO, PERO VALE LA PENA ADQUIRIRLO, EN ONDA CORTA SE SINTONIZA MUY BIEN, TE RECOMIENDO USARLO EN LUGARES DONDE NO HAY MUCHA URBANIZACION CAPTA SEÑALES DE OTROS LUGARES LEJANOS MUY INDEPENDIENTE DE LA ONDA CORTA EH RECIBIDO EN AM ESTACIONES DE ESTADOS UNIDOS SIENDO EN EL DIA ESO ME IMPRESIONA BASTANTE.