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Reviews For: Tecsun PL-330

Category: Receivers: General Coverage

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Review Summary For : Tecsun PL-330
Reviews: 4MSRP: $80 usd
Description:
Portable general coverage receiver AM FM SW SSB
Product is not in production
More Info: https://www.tecsun-radios.com/product/tecsun-pl330-ssb-radio/
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
2444.5
N7BWB Rating: 2022-11-11
Good, but overloads with strong local broadcast stations. Time Owned: more than 12 months.
For my purposes and from my QTH this isn't the best receiver on earth. I am plagued with local, powerful broadcast band stations, which, during the day turn the front end of this little SDR into soup. Attaching an external antenna is out of the question. Take this radio out of the high RF areas, and it is excellent, but I can also attest to the poor AGC characteristics on SSB which sadly also plagues nearly all receivers of this class.
Don't get me wrong, for the price, this is a good receiver. Comparing it to others of this ilk, it suffers my RF rich environment no worse than the rest of my little portables, including the Crane Skywave.
The addition of an attenuator and an RF gain control would make the situation more workable, but that would, of course, add cost to this reasonably priced receiver.
I CAN recommend this receiver if you don't live in the shadows of local broadcast stations.
KA3PCX Rating: 2022-10-04
Must use external antenna Time Owned: more than 12 months.
The telescopic antenna is worthless for shortwave but I think mine might have not been connected or got loose.
Now when I add the external antenna with wire or one of those reel antennas it comes alive.
The best ssb receiver for it's size.
It's a keeper!
By the way u hit the number 3 key in medium wave u can switch the medium wave to an external antenna .
Ray KA3PCX,!
NF6M Rating: 2022-08-07
Does a Fantastic Job for an Inexpensive Portable Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I agree with the comments of N3OJD about this little receiver. For the price, I find it works very well.

I'll mention a couple of additional things that I've noticed.

Pros:
-The Enhanced Tuning Mode (ETM+) auto-scanning function does a pretty decent job of finding AM and shortwave stations.
- The ATS memory system stores separate sets of memories for each hour of the day. This means that medium wave DXers can have those long-haul night-time stations stored in memories without having them clutter up things in the daytime.
- I have tried connecting this radio up to my dipole outdoors when listening to SSB on 40m, and it did not seem to overload. I'm sure there will be situations that prove too much for it, but the AGC did MUCH better than my older Tecsun PL-600 in this regard. I've had no need so far for DX/Local sensitivity switch.
- The radio is very sensitive and even the built-in whip does pretty well on many ham bands and on the FM broadcast band, but it is just a bit short for listening on 160m and 80m. I found that adding a few feet of wire antenna helped quite a bit on those lower frequency bands. With even 3-4 feet of extra wire connected I was able to more easily listen to 75m round table discussions on SSB at night.
- FM stereo sounds very good through headphones.
- The DSP filter bandwidth settings work pretty well. I found the 2.2kHz setting worked well for SSB.

Cons:
- The tuning knob has detents and fights with you as you're tuning. This knob also feels pretty wobbly, so not sure how sturdy the encoder will be long term. The only other way to tune the frequency is to punch in frequencies on the numeric keypad or hop between memories. This radio does not have UP/DOWN tuning buttons like the other larger Tecsun radios have.
- Since this is a DSP receiver rather than a PLL design, the receiver mutes the audio every 1kHz when tuning. Once I find something to listen to it does a great job and frequency stability is good, but when tuning around just trying to find signals on the ham bands it is very annoying.
- The built-in ferrite antenna for AM medium wave is on the small side (the whole radio is only about 5" long). I suspect that an external AM loop antenna will help things quite a bit there. My other slightly larger portable radio is a bit more sensitive on AM.

All-in-all though, this is a super fun little radio to have along when traveling. It sounds great through both the internal speaker and through headphones. And it does s surprisingly good job on SSB/CW on the ham bands, other than the issue of muting while tuning.

I tried plugging in a bluetooth transmitter to the headphone jack, and that worked great with my wireless headphones. So that's a decent option as an add-on, if you already have a favorite pair of wireless headphones that you travel with.
N3OJD Rating: 2022-02-02
Amazing Bang for the SWL Buck! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I started as an SWL and got my ham ticket in 1957. Since then I've had probably 100 different receivers.

I used the PL-330 maybe 100 hours and I have to say this tiny portable is AMAZING!

Pros:
-- Great Sensitivity on ALL bands including mw
-- Variable bandwidth
-- Stability making SSB a pleasure to listen to
-- Great audio, especially for such a tiny package
-- External antenna jack
-- Menu allows using mw antenna internal or external
-- Lithium battery included
-- Tiny package
-- Readily available
-- The Price!!

Cons:

-- Ergonomics take some getting used to because the small size makes for small buttons
-- Bandwidth button which I frequently use is recessed - very difficult to press. Why???
-- Frequency calibration changes 2-50Hz from day to day BUT re-alignment is easily done and just takes a second.
-- No attenuator or rf gain control
-- No tone control. although audio sounds good to me

CAVEAT:
I always listen to this radio using an external antenna and headphones plugged in which makes for a great listening experience. I'm far away from any strong radio signals so I can't speak to whether it overloads easily.

Highly recommended.