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When it reached the markets, the PL-880 made a splash. A pocket receiver with several selectable DSP-bandwidths, DSP-demodulation, synchronous detector and some other interesting and hidden features. All this resulted in a lot of interesting debates and food for thought in the internet forums. Mainly, people puzzled over the hidden and undocumented functions. Because I cannot buy every receiver, I depend on friendly people, who put the PL-880 at my disposal. After some searching, I found someone. Harald Denzel loaned me his PL-880 and a big thank you to him! The PL-880 had predecessor models, which were very much talked about, e.g., PL-600, PL-660 and now the new PL-880. The preceding models were all analogue radios and were real assets to the market. In the PL-880, digital signal processing is used. Demodulation and filter band widths are achieved with DSP. Die wichtigsten Eckdaten:
For the power supply of the PL-800, Tecsun came upon an unconventional solution. The radio has only a mini USB connector which also charges the 3.7V Li-ion accumulator. Unfortunately, the accu does not have standard size and so you cannot use standard size batteries. This is very disadvantageous when your accumulators run out of power and you have no opportunity of recharging them. If you want to use the radio with an external power supply, you have a serious problem! You can only connect the receiver to a PC or to 5V switching power supply. And you can imagine the consequences! Receiving long- medium- and shortwave does not get along very well with switching power supplies and computers because reception is heavily interfered with. If you want to listen to long-, medium-, and shortwave seriously, you can only operate the PL-880 with accumulators. A signal strength indicator that shows the values in dBµ and dB is very unusual for radios in this price range. These values do not mean a thing to the normal radio listener. Only with the help of tables and some special knowledge, these values can be converted into the usual S-meter values. dBµ and dB is mainly used for professional receivers. Here a small conversion table from dBµ* to S-values (dBµ is dBµV = voltage)*
The dB- value stands for the S/N, which equals the SNR = signal/noise ratio. The higher the value, the better the intelligibility. In theory, anyway.
The constructional quality of the PL-800 is high. The controls are placed conveniently and allow for easy operation of the receiver. A novelty for a pocket receiver are the two tuning knobs. One is for coarse tuning, the other, the smaller one, is for fine tuning to at least 10Hz. Thus you can stop conveniently at the desired station without changing the tuning steps and then do the fine tuning. A good solution! Tuning on long-, medium-, and shortwave is without signal drop-outs and provides an absolutely analogous feeling. The PL-800 has an antenna connector for shortwave, but unfortunately, not for long- and medium wave. There is also a line- out and a stereo headphones connector. As a fully-fledged world receiver, the PL-800 can also receive FM in stereo with headphones. When tuning the FM-band, you will notice signal drop-outs, which are kept to a limit, though. Additionally, there are other functions like alarm clock, automatic memory function etc., which I will not discuss. How does it play? I tested the PL-880 for some weeks and examined it thoroughly. As reference I used the Sony ICF-SW7600GR. The PL800's reception is rather noise-free and has a very good, almost bass-like audio. Crackling noises and hissing were less noticeable with the PL-800 than with the ICF-SW7600GR. I really was surprised at the good reception of long- and medium wave. So far, most radios made in China had been rather deaf in this range, but this cannot be said about the PL-880. Here, the Tecsun clearly beat the Sony. Sensitivity, noise and last but not least the DSP-selectivity helped the PL-880 to a very good reception. But there is a downside, nonetheless. The legendary synchronous detector of the PL-880 could not convince me. Neither in the case of weak nor strong stations, could the synchronous detector improve reception. The detector "bubbled" and lost synchronization rather quickly. It was just useless. Maybe the detector will be improved with new firmware at a later date. Anyway, the synchronous detector of the Sony was much better. The good reception quality of the PL-880 could also be noticed on shortwave. The noise-free and pleasant reception was convincing and receiving stations with the built-in telescopic antenna was never subject to criticism. And there were no overloads, either. The Sony, on the other hand, showed some flaws in this respect. Sometimes you could hear "ghost stations" below busy broadcast bands. At the time of testing, I had the indoor antennas Reuter RLA3A and the Grahn GS5-SE/ML3 at hand and I took the opportunity to operate the Tecsun with these antennas. The PL-880 worked very well with the Grahn antenna. Reception was improved considerably and there were no overloads. It didn't go to well with the Reuter antenna, though. The receiving level was better, but at the expense of the signal/noise ratio and there were overloads at times. SSB-reception was good, but the Sony sounded clearly better. The audio of the Pl-880 has a scratchy sound which is due to a suboptimal AGC. And the audio was muffled, too. But tuning with the two knobs was superb! When turning the small knob slowly, tuning was in 10Hz steps. When turning faster, the flywheel effect is activated and the steps are 50Hz. There is no criticism as far as FM reception is concerned. Pleasant audio, excellent selectivity and good strong signal performance convinced me right away. Too bad though that there is only one band width. With such a high-tech radio, RDS would have been good, too. The Sony was the loser in the FM reception category. There were some overloads and it did not reach the audio quality of the Tecsun.
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Hidden functions Unfortunately, it was impossible to find out, why Tecsun is hiding the following functions or did not activate them. Some functions are certainly useful; others do not seem to be fully developed. The hidden functions can be activated by pushing some of the buttons. Presently, I know the following features:
Conclusion For its reasonable price and its DSP- technology, the Tecsun PL-880 is a superb pocket receiver. It outshines almost all of its competing products. But SSB-reception and the synchronous detector were disappointing, the detector was unable to improve reception in any given situation, it even made it worse. In AM, the audio of the PL-880 is excellent and makes the synchronous detector superfluous. FM reception is sophisticated. The PL-880 still has some minor flaws, which can be remedied by later firmware updates. Whether this can be done via the USB connector, I do not know. The hidden functions left me with some mixed impressions. Either you make them available without many lengthy searches or you deactivate them… A recommendable receiver! posted at October 18, 2014
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