Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Julian Stargardt, who writes:
Hi Thomas,
I thought SWLingers would like to know that the Tecsun S-2200X will be on sale from 27 August at Anon Co for US$372.00
See: https://www.anon-co.com/product/tecsun-s2200x-radio
That’s a lot of radio for a reasonable price.
The Anon site has a good description of the S2200X as well as its specifications and also has some cool photos showing the dual battery options of 4 x D cells and 2 x 18650 LiPo batteries.
All the best.
73
Julian
Thank you for the tip, Julian!
Expensive for what is just another cheaply produced dsp radio that offers poor audio quality on SSB and poor performing SYNC.
If they improved the analogue design I would have bought it because dsp has ruined ssb and as a result exss sounds bad also.
I’ll pass on this.
The circuit description on the page sure sounds like yet another iteration of the PL-880/S-8800/PL-990/H-501 line of “triple conversion” receivers with a conventional frontend and VFO and a si473x doing demodulation/filtering etc., – in other words, I’d be surprised if that one had better functioning SSB AGC and better/different filter shapes than its older circuit siblings.
I understand how the flooding of the market with radios built around that same inexpensive family of Silicon Labs (now Skyworks) ICs for at least a decade now and calling them “DSP radios” could have given the term “DSP” a bad reputation. But besides “DSP” being the superordinate term for the whole technology – the chips in question are only “DSP chips” in a very broad interpretation of the term – they are “radio-on-a-chip”-ICs employing DSP technology for the sole purpose of making cheap radios more powerful and even cheaper, They are an actually super flexible bunch of radio circuitry modules in one package that can be used as a whole with minimal external components needed, or you can use only the parts of them like the digital demodulation/filtering – that’s how the more expensive Chinese “DSP” radios get continuous, “mute”-free tuning, and also how they all have the – more or less – same back end and controllers, making them all sound and behave very similar.
However, this at least 10 year old design is very different and quite far from what “proper” digital signal processing, actual DSP chips and the technology as a whole has brought to us – the most capable, most sensitive, stable and selective (non-“commercial”) radios in history. Even on the cheap side: One of the things that impressed me most about the Belka was when I learned that it had a smart selection of separate and very good components (with an actual, pretty powerful but affordable Analog Devices DSP chip doing all the post-mixer stuff) forming a proper SDR communication receiver with stunning signal (processing) quality… at a price (before shipping+taxes) that buys you only half of a “triple-conversion” Tecsun. So if done right, even “cheap” DSP can be “really good” and not only “good enough for most and/or for the price”. The technology just doesn’t deserve being used synonymously with “least-cost” or “same old, same old”! 🙂
Thank you Thomas for posting this.
If you, like me, are waiting with baited breath to get your paws on the Tecsun S2200X, we might have to wait a bit longer….
Update
So it’s 27 August here in Hong Kong and the Anon-Co.com website no longer says above its entry for the S2200X “Available on 27 August 2024”.
Now it says in a red bar “Notify when this product is available”….
So I guess we will have to wait a bit longer.
Fingers crossed, this won’t be a wait like the Eton E1 – probably not, after all there have been review sets circulating in China for a year and the redoubtable and lucky Dan was sent a review set, see his excellent and well illustrated review at:
https://swling.com/blog/2024/07/dan-robinson-reviews-the-new-tecsun-s-2200x-portable-receiver/
73
Julian S.