We now have a price for the Tecsun S-8800.
Anna at Anon-Co has notified me that they’ve published the listing for the new Tecsun S-8800. The price is $268.00 US with free shipping to the USA. She also noted that the S-8800 won’t actually be available until some time next week.
Note that my Tecsun S-8800 review is in final draft. It’s one of the longest reviews I’ve written. I will post it within a few days. Follow the tag Tecsun S-8800 for updates.
The LW/MW performance is not so good as is the case with most Tecsun radios except the S2000 which I own and like a lot and deem this radio exceptionally poor value as a result, sure it looks good and the Audio may sound good but at that price Tecsun need to start thinking along the lines of changing that very out dated display and including RDS and also it’s time for a DRM capable radio, now that I would pay this price for.
Sorry Tecsun, but this is just another multiband radio in a fancier dress that offers little from your previous radios to justify this price !
I wonder if the line out is as hot (high level) as it is on other Tecsun radios (like the PL-880 or S-2000)?
I have tested it with my component home stereo. The line-out level is higher than I would like. It’s not as hot as the PL-880, I don’t believe, but it’s much hotter than, say, my Sony ICF-SW7600GR. The trouble is, I don’t have an RCA-to-1/8″ adapter to hook it directly up to my digital recorder at the moment, where I could easily compare levels.
Looks very much like the S350DL.
It does indeed, but shares nothing internally with it.
I look forward to the review, but one thing that I noticed reading the specs:
Why does tecsun continue to release radios where it’s a choice of tuning up to 1710khz, or 9khz steps but not both? In (all?) tecsun radios you can have a choice of 520-1710 in 10KHz steps, or 522-1611 in 9KHz steps.
Here in Australia there are multiple stations occupying 1611-1710KHz these days and at night the DX of all the tiny open narrowcast (low power) stations in other cities is interesting.
High power licensed broadcasting only goes to 1602KHz in Australia, everything between 1611-1710 is low power transmission. A powerful receiver like this one could get great DX especially added by a loop.
Competing radios by Sangean and Eton don’t have this issue. I know it’s a minor issue, but surely other countries with 9KHz tuning make use of 1611-1710 too?
As an aside to my whinge, anyone interested in how the 1611-1710 space is used in Australia can read more here:
https://www.acma.gov.au/theACMA/narrowband-area-service-licensing
According to at least one review slow tuning still works in 1kHz steps on the MW band, so it’s possible to set the MW spacing to 10kHz & tune all the way up to 1710. That’ll be a slight pain in the bum if you want to spin around the band to see what’s there, and I don’t know if it affects memories at all, but it’s not unworkable.
Personally I don’t see why it doesn’t offer the option of continuous tuning from 100kHz to 29.999MHz – but I guess, like most modern SW portables, it’s really a consumer AM-FM radio dressed up with SW.
Yes, fine tuning on all of the bands can be made in 1kHz increments with the fine tune control. I did this when I checked the LW and MW bands for birdies.
It also tunes MW in 1kHz increments on the main tuning knob if you turn it slowly, doesn’t it, in typical Tecsun fashion? Because it’d be a real pain if not…
If the fine tune only tunes in 1kHz increments, though, that severely limits things for many uses. Plenty of pirate/clandestine SSB broadcasts are a couple of hundred Hz off, and it’d quickly get annoying if you can’t tune any finer than 1kHz. It’s a limitation that’s acceptable in a pocket radio, but not for something which purports to be a step up from that.
If DSP works the same way as with other TECSUN portable radios, I’m not interested. No need for DSP it it has good Dynamic Range, audio (specially with headphones), AGC, image rejection, low floor noise, variable RF gain and of course sensitive both as standalone and/or with external antennae. A plus is to have good Synchronous Detection.
No radio has all of these atributes, but some have enough to be very good portables like PL-680 (PL-660 minus squelch like filter and better AGC) and Grundig Eton Executive Satellit III.
I look forward to reading your review of the S-8800, Thomas. If available would you provide the audio output power of this radio in addition to speaker size and speaker power rating?
No need to answer this. I looked at the S-8800 operating manual PDF online. Audio output power is just under 1 watt and the speaker is rated for 2 watts.
While the S-8800 appears to be a feature-rich portable receiver, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t experiencing symptoms of sticker shock. I’ll reserve ultimate judgement until reading the review.
Thanks for the update and forthcoming review, Thomas.
-Peat
Yes, I address this in my review which I hope to publish later today.