Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
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 found the antenna quite stiff to extend. Lubrication did not help. In earlier versions of the radio, this contributed to antenna failure.
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.
Operation/Ergonomics
When I really get to dreaming, I think of XHDATA or some other maker designing a portable like the 808 – why not call it the 1000 Super DSP – that actually has continuously adjustable bandwidth control. This will never happen.
The D-808 is at least as sensitive as my Alinco DJ-X11 scanner and skunks the rather deaf Tecsun in this band. Unlike the PL-660 and most other small receivers covering that band it has a squelch, which is by the way active on all bands.
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.
So far, the list is short! As a sacrifice to style, the manufacturer has kept all front panel buttons almost flush with the case. The effect looks great, but they are almost too low and close to the front panel. Those with larger fingers may find operation awkward or frustrating. Also, entering a shortwave frequency with less than five digits (i.e., below 10,000 kHz) requires a trailing push of the Frequency (FREQ) button. Searching round, there have been quite a few reports of this fault on the web and it looks like its a design flaw. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be the support in place to get the radio fixed so when it goes wrong, it is cheaper to post it direct to the nearest landfill.The Xhdata D-808 has a large LCD display that shows the station frequency, time, battery level, and other settings. It has several tuning modes, including manual, automatic, and memory presets. The radio can store up to 500 stations in its memory, which can be categorized by language, genre, or location. It also has a digital signal processing (DSP) chip that enhances the sound quality and reduces noise and distortion. 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.
Great Deal 
New Comment