| WB5LXZ |
Rating:  |
2023-06-08 | |
| Excellent for the price |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I've owned hundreds of receivers over the past 50+ years and was a dealer for 20+ years. I've also owned a dozen of these Drake engineered Tecsun built radios which I have used and sold to friends, always purchasing another for my hamshack. I rate it as a "great" receiver in it's price range, now selling for $200-$250 here in the Dallas area. I primarily listen to AM talk shows but also ssb nets on a daily basis with it connected to my all band G5RV outside dipole antenna. It will hear most anything that my more expensive kenwood and icom radios will hear. Stability and audio quality is excellent.....as I am writing this I am listening to my daily ssb net on 7290khz. I also pack it up and take to the ranch on occasion, using the large whip antenna. Is recommended for the casual or serious listener who wants an excellent receiver in the $250 price range. |
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| VE3XMN |
Rating: |
2019-07-21 | |
| EXCELLENT |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I have both the Grundig Satellit 650 and a Grundig Satellit 800. I prefer the 800 from the 2 receivers however in my humble opinion they are both excellent! |
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| N0TLD |
Rating: |
2018-07-31 | |
| Good, not great |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I know others have had good experience/s with this radio but I've just never felt the love for this one.
It is a *good* multiband radio, no doubt about it. With an external antenna it is pretty sensitive and with a loop antenna I have been able to enjoy a bit of MWDX over the years.
But... it's just 'ok'. To me anyway.
For one thing, it's so damned big and boxy and feels hollow, plasticky. I get that the idea was to be in line with earlier Grundig Satellit rigs like the 600 or 650 (both of which are better radios by the way) but in the case of those radios size was a part of function/need; the 800 feels like a smaller radio inside a big boxy costume. Certainly, the electronic circuitry for the 800 is smaller, more surface mount and compact, so it always felt like they were just trying to make it look like the earlier rigs for coolness' sake, not performance.
And it does perform fine, though I have experienced images on MW if I'm not using a loop (and sometimes even if I am). Its SW is good, pedestrian but competent enough. SSB is stable enough. And goodness knows it can be a LOUD radio, big audio dynamite here.
But it doesn't have any of the feel/spirit of its earlier Satellit siblings, at least not to my tastes. It's not terribly portable given its size; it is about as portable as the Panasonic R4900, and if you know that radio, you know I'm saying it is not very portable at all.
I have always thought it was way overpriced, too. Even on the used market it seems to command much higher prices than make any sense to me. If I wanted to drop +/- $300 on an (ostensibly) portable radio, I would find a Sony 2010, or even that Panasonic RF4900 I mentioned -- it would be no more or less portable, and is a better performer, in my humble opinion. It certainly feels solid and well-built, and is satisfying to tune and 'knobulate', where the 800 just... isn't.
I just don't dig it, is all. More power to you if you do. But not for me, thanks.
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| VK2JEM |
Rating: |
2017-07-25 | |
| Why so big? |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Only had this one a couple of weeks, so this is pretty much first out of box impressions.
My first thought when i turned it on.""OMG its HUGE!" Make sure you got lots of desk space, and forget about it being a "portable". Its about as portable as microwave oven with a handle.
I have admittedly too many receivers, including r71, r75 drake r8, even tecsun pl660. I would say they all outperform this. I have no idea why they made it so stupid big (yet the speaker is only 4", lack of RF gain control, if shift or NB is disappointing. Synch works but not as good as either the tecsun or Drake, better than the R75 of course.
Sensitivity, 6,4,2.3 bandwidths are all good. I live in weak signal area so i cant speak to overloading or dynamic range, all signals are weak to me!
I wish there was a way to light the display when the radio is off like the Sat 750, then it would be a good bedside "radio alarm clock".
I would say its a very good but not great, too big, over priced radio. I think Grundig thought if they made it really big they could charge top end price for mid range performance. Its my 3rd Grundig and my 3rd disappointment
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| TURBO68 |
Rating: |
2015-10-02 | |
| Excellent |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I bought a second hand Grundig Satellit 800 on ebay condition is very good first thing i noticed its huge for a prtable compare to my other receivers hooked up to a PK Loops 30metre wire anrenna with a balun at around 5 metres high can pick hf aircraft from around the world for vhf its hooked up to an Icom-AH7000 discone working excellent on vhf airband and i do use recharegable batteries but they go flat very quick from my experience with the receiver its excellent.
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Earlier 5-star review posted by AUSSIE on 2015-10-02
I bought a second hand Grundig Satellit 800 on ebay condition is very good first thing i noticed its huge for a prtable compare to my other receivers hooked up to a PK Loops 30metre wire anrenna with a balun at around 5 metres high can pick hf aircraft from around the world for vhf its hooked up to an Icom-AH7000 discone working excellent on vhf airband and i do use recharegable D batteries but they go flat very quick from my experience with the receiver its excellent. |
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| TRXWGN |
Rating: |
2015-10-01 | |
| Plastic Boat Anchor |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
| I saw an ad for this fine radio for a measly 100 bucks, so I checked it out. I thought it was an absurdly large, fake Chinese Grundig, an overpriced plastic "just trying out the hobby" shortwave radio. After I hooked up a random wire to the sizable telescoping antenna, replaced the noisy stock(?) power supply and waited for sundown, I was surprised. It was, by far, the best shortwave radio I had owned. The sync actually held onto a frequency. I could reliably tune in the hams on SSB. No BFO knob here, which I kind of miss, the Satellit just fine tunes SSB, which is effective enough. I had a Sony SW7600GR and various Etons and Realistics and none of them consistently tuned in what I wanted. If conditions are decent, the Satellit 800 shines. I like the metal tuning knobs; the numeric keys took some getting used to, they seem to belong to a smaller, cheaper radio, but they work. It received FM well and AM broadcast is more than adequate, not sure if I would classify it was a DX machine. I picked up some aircraft on the air band, which I consider little more than a gimmick. I have scanners that can actually "scan" the air band considerably better, though there is a squelch to quiet the Satellit 800 between transmissions. It goes through six D batteries pretty quickly. If I leave it on all night receiving quietly, the low battery icon flashes in the morning. Speaker has a full sound, but I mean, it certainly is big enough to not sound tinny. The next step above this Grundig would be something in the Icom R75 range. If you can find the Satellit 800 for a good price, it fills the gap between the semi-disposable Chinese shortwave radios (such as the decent Tecsun PL-380) and the professional receivers. |
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| KC7JNJ |
Rating: |
2012-10-06 | |
| Always worked for us |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| When my dad went into the old folks home (10 years ago) he wanted a radio for SW. I had him try all the receivers I had and he could not operate them. We needed something with big buttons and simple. We got this for him and he could use it. I covertly ran him a 100ft long wire to the tree outside his room. He spent hours tuning through the shortwave bands, and listening to his favorite music on FM. He even got into listening to the air traffic. I think this radio prolonged his life. We never had an issue. It was a radio that worked the way we needed it to. I still have it and it works great. Though I do not use it much, every time I turn it on it works and sounds great. |
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| KB4YHO |
Rating: |
2012-01-21 | |
| Better than expected |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Picked up the Chinese made Grundig 800's on E**y for under $300. Heck used 2010's are near $300 so since I already had one of those I'll try it. Alot of bad press has been written on this box so I knew the chance I was taking. Anyway it came with a set of headphones, nice manual and was in excellent condition. Well taken care of.
I hooked it up to my 80 meter loop and switched it on selected the external antenna on the 800 and wow! I ended up listening to it for 3 hours straight. I tuned everything from WWV to the priates on 6925Khz AM to the 20/40/80 meter sideband nets.
Audio(LOUD 20watts max), selectivity and overall ease of use from this big box was very good. That 800 gave my 2010 fits and in most cases was better. Ok so the low band stuff was good lets now plug in the 800 to my tower mounted discone at 60 ft. Again the FM performance reminded me of my SX-1250 Pioneer, it can tune in 20Khz steps so you can get in between stations and the sensitivity is excellent. FM stations 80 miles away where full quieting and audio quality was good. FM stereo outputs on the 800 is a nice touch too. I then switched the big box to the AM aircraft band, tuned the local tower freq which I could hear in the noise on my 2010 with the discone. Well I adjused the squelch control and there was the tower about a S2. Amazing. In conclusion I was very suprised in the performance of this tabletop receiver. It's clearly not a high tier unit but man it is easy to use and performs much better than I ever expected. My only complaint is no noise blanker. The price of these used $250-$325 is a good deal and Drake still services them.
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| AC8KU |
Rating: |
2012-01-03 | |
| Good consumer grade rcvr |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I've had this radio for between 5 and 10 years and I use it nearly every day. It has been perfectly reliable and all the features still work. The controls are user friendly. It's very stable for SSB but the three filter widths and the one-step attenuator aren't very effective for anything very challenging. The synchronous detector isn't quite as good as on the Sony ICF2010. On the FM broadcast band, the selectivity and sensitivity seem to be on a par with my Sony ICF2010 but dramatically inferior to my cheap, analog Sangean WR-11. The memories are easy enough to use, but the clock and timer functions are hardly worth the trouble. If you use batteries to power this radio you will spend a lot of money. I don't know why they made it so big: there must be a lot of empty space inside. |
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| N2AUF |
Rating: |
2011-01-22 | |
| TERRIFIC RADIO! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| I CAN COMPARE THIS TO THE BEST IN PORTABLE RADIOS AND MANY TABLE MODELS COSTING ALOT MORE. I CAN'T IMAGINE ANYONE NOT BEING SATISFIED WITH THE OVERALL PERFORMANCE AND FEATURES OF THIS RADIO. PROBABLY THE BAD REVIEWS HERE CAME FROM USERS WHO EITHER HAD UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS, OR GOT A RADIO WITH A PROBLEM. FOR THE PRICE, I BELIEVE IT IS BETTER THAN ANYTHING ELSE BY FAR, AND IN ALL RESPECTS. I FINALLY GOT ONE RECENTLY FROM AN ELDERLY GENTLEMAN WHO BOUGHT IT NEW AND NEVER REALLY USED IT. BEING A NON HAM AND NOT TECHNICALLY ORIENTED, IT WAS TOO MUCH RADIO FOR HIM. FOR ME, IT REPRESENTS ALOT OF FUN, QUALITY LISTENING. THE SSB FUNCTIONS QUITE WELL FOR WHAT IT IS. THIS IS THE KEY. IF YOU THINK A RADIO IN THIS CLASS SHOULD SOUND LIKE IT COST OVER $1000.00, THEN YOU WILL BE UPSET. I AM DELIGHTED BY THE LOW NOISE FLOOR, SESITIVITY, SELECTIVITY, ETC. AND I SEE NO QUALITY CONCERNS ANYWHERE. THE SOUND IS GOOD BY PORTABLE RADIO STANDARDS. IT IS OBVIOUS THAT R L DRAKE HAD A HAND IN IT'S DEVELOPEMENT. EBAY PRICES FOR THIS RADIO ARE USUALLY STILL UP OVER $300. IF THIS WAS A JUNKER, THIS WOULD NOT BE THE CASE. |
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