Today I noticed that Amazon is offering an excellent price on the fine performing Tecsun PL-310ET portable AM-FM-SW radio.
The current sale price is $39.80 with free shipping for Amazon Prime members. This is a good price on a compact portable radio normally selling for $48.00.
Besides being a worthy value in a low cost portable, DSP-based radio for the SWL hobbyist, the PL-310ET also excels as a receiver to keep in your vehicle’s glovebox or your emergency kit.
The PL-310ET was included in Gary DeBock’s 2015 Ultralight Radio Shootout Review, and it fared quite well in Gary’s tests.
Guy Atkins is a Sr. Graphic Designer for T-Mobile and lives near Seattle, Washington. He’s a regular contributor to the SWLing Post.
The Amazon link states: “Special design of SSB demodulation functions, can receive amateur maritime communications and personal radio.”
I don’t believe the PL-310ET has SSB … or am I wrong?
The Anon-Co price is $40.85 … and the Amazon price was $42.00, then $40.80 & now $39.80 so it’s a modest discount.
Hi Troy,
I initially didn’t notice a lower “regular” PL-310ET price than the $48.00 I mentioned in my post, but I took another look after your comment. Yep–there are other prices on Amazon for the same radio. I do NOT see the $40.80 you noticed, but I spot $42.80 and $42.63 prices. It can pay to look closely for the best deal on Amazon items!
That’s a good catch on the SSB mode– the PL-310ET certainly does NOT have SSB capability. The advertiser text also seems to mislead on the memories; the rather stilted English indicates 1000 memories (“1000 group radio information”) but actual memory capacity is 550. Not that anyone can make full use of even 550 memories in these days of dwindling SWL targets :^)
If you want to track the price of this product or any other product on Amazon you can use a website called camelcamelcamel. Here is the direct link to the price history for the PL-310et.
https://camelcamelcamel.com/TECSUN-PL-310ET-Stereo-World-allnice/product/B0104J57GS?context=search
Thanks for mentioning this Amazon tracking site, Marty! I have used it in the past but it’s dropped off my radar lately. I need to revive my listing of tracked items through CamelCamelCamel (a rather clever site name, too, when you think about the peaks and valleys of pricing trends :^)
I use “Keepa” … it’s a Plugin and I have it loaded on my Chrome Browser. You can typically track items since the day they were first listed & the graph with date & time of price changes appears directly under the item’s description – that’s where I got the numbers that I quoted in my reply ($42.00 on 9/29/17, $40.80 10/11/17 & $39.80 effective 10/21/17).
That is a great price for the PL-310-ET! Thanks for the tip, Guy! (How many did you buy?) 🙂
Hi Thomas! I’ve had a PL-310ET for a while, but I’m holding out for a portable that will work as well as a PL-310ET, but cost the same as the recently reviewed, $20 Tivdio V-115! Then I’ll fill my trick-or-treat sack with them :^)