{"id":33615,"date":"2018-08-19T07:39:53","date_gmt":"2018-08-19T11:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/?p=33615"},"modified":"2023-03-22T06:34:27","modified_gmt":"2023-03-22T10:34:27","slug":"a-review-of-the-tecsun-r-9012-shortwave-radio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/a-review-of-the-tecsun-r-9012-shortwave-radio\/","title":{"rendered":"A review of the Tecsun R-9012 shortwave radio"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Laurence Neils, who shares the following guest post:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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A review of the Tecsun R-9012<\/h2>\n

by\u00a0Laurence Neils<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have cheap radios. I can’t really justify buying more expensive ones given how much time (not all that much) I spend listening to the short wave broadcasters. The consequence of this is that, when I do listen to shortwave stations, I have the rather standard ultraportables to listen on.<\/p>\n

My go-to radio is the Tivdio V-115<\/a>, which has pulled out quite nice reception for me, and offers several functions I like a lot. However, it was missing one that interested me the most: analog or analog-like tuning. If I want to listen to something, I either have to know its frequency and try it, or I have to let the radio do an automatic scan. While it’s quite good at pulling out stations and letting me hear them, it can take a few minutes to do a full scan, and canceling it doesn\u2019t result in the part scanned so far to be stored. Very few stations I am interested in hearing are convenient to jump into several minutes after they start (my interest is in spoken content rather than music, and neither news nor stories make a ton of sense if the introductory information was not heard).<\/p>\n

From a recommendation here on the SWLing Post<\/em>, I chose to purchase a Tecsun R-9012 radio to help me do a convenient scan, which is useful because it allows me to find stations without knowing their frequency, and leaves me to not remember all seventy frequencies a certain broadcaster is using this year.<\/p>\n

Physical Description<\/h2>\n

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When I bought my Tecsun R9012, it arrived quite quickly from Amazon<\/a>. It included a short manual, whose contents could be loosely paraphrased as “insert batteries and turn on”. Other than that, the radio is all that’s there.<\/p>\n

The R9012 is relatively small, but not as thin or compact as the Tivdio, which will be my main comparison unit for this review. It is your basic rectangle form factor, and about the size of the small tape recorders that were the last to be phased out for portable recorders. It would be easy enough to put this in a backpack, jacket pocket, or glove compartment, but you have no chance comfortably fitting it into a standard pocket. On the back, there is a flip-out kickstand that can hold the radio at about thirty degrees from horizontal and the battery compartment. This radio is powered from two AA batteries.<\/p>\n

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The right side of the R9012 contains the analog tuning knob, which I will discuss quite a bit later, and the power switch, which is not connected to anything else (not integrated into the volume knob or mode selector).<\/p>\n

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The left side gives you a 3.5mm audio out jack. This supports all the headphone types I\u2019ve tried. One benefit of this radio is that headphones with integrated microphones, such as the ones that come with the iPhone as well as various sets that are intended for phone use, will work with it. Some other radios won\u2019t work well with that type of headset. The Tivdio, for example, will play through the headphones but forgets to turn off the speaker if there is a microphone on them, making the headphones pretty much pointless.<\/p>\n

Next to that jack is a power port, supposedly to recharge the batteries. A connector for this is not included, nor do they seem to sell one. I suppose the theory is that you might already have a suitable one in that box of old cables we all have, but I can\u2019t see this as a particularly useful feature given the RFI you\u2019ll get if you connect a radio directly to the mains to recharge. Above the ports is the volume knob, which is a very basic analog one, and then the wrist strap, which is integrated into the case. There doesn\u2019t seem to be a way to remove or change it, should you desire that.<\/p>\n

On the front of the radio, the speaker takes up the left half. This is fine for standard listening, but don\u2019t expect wonders of audio fidelity. On the right half, there is the twelve-position mode switch (from left to right, FM, MW, SW from low to high frequency) and the tuning display.<\/p>\n

FM performance<\/h2>\n

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The Tecsun has a standard FM function, with stated coverage from 76 to 108 MHz. This is the leftmost position on the mode selector. The band is not divided into multiple switch positions, meaning that stations will be relatively packed into dialing space when compared to shortwave, which is spread across ten bands.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t buy this radio to use it for FM. I have very little interest tuning for FM stations. Some people may enjoy the experience of manual tuning for a station they can locate quickly, but I\u2019m not one. I can easily type the frequency I want on my Tivdio, and I intend to keep doing that for FM. I mostly intended to test FM performance on the R9012 because I was curious to see whether there would be anything audible in the 76-87 MHz section. I know that our TV standards have switched off using analog audio, so I assumed there would be nothing, but I\u2019d never formally put that to the test.<\/p>\n

FM on the R9012 has problems. In fact, it has a lot of problems. Among other things, the FM process on this radio doesn\u2019t seem to have a very good idea where things are. I\u2019d be tuning through looking for some station and I\u2019d find it…only to see that I was in a completely foreign part of the spectrum where that station had no business being. It seems that, unless you\u2019re very focused in on a station, the R9012 is liable to pick up some other broadcast and layer them on top of each other. Never mind that the broadcasts have nothing to do with each other and aren\u2019t anywhere near each other on the band. If you have a specific station you want, you can tune to it and have no problems. If you want to see what\u2019s there, you\u2019ll have a very fun time listening to stations that you might want to listen to, only to find that that was an image, you\u2019ve lost it now, and you can\u2019t find it again.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, I managed to find a part of the spectrum that gave me three different images simultaneously. Ironically, the broadcast I intended to use as my landmark, the local classical music broadcast, which is located very close to the middle of the FM spectrum, was strong enough or at a coincidental frequency that I identified images of it at six different places on the scan, in addition to where it should be. So I got my answer about 76-87 MHZ. According to the R9012, there\u2019s a lot of signal there. It\u2019s just coincidence that it sounds exactly the same as standard FM broadcasts with extra static.<\/p>\n

FM performance gets worse: this radio is extremely sensitive to location.<\/p>\n

In order to get nice reception, you have to have the radio in a good position. This seems to be completely random. Standing up so the antenna lies flat on the top, but is not extended produces almost silence. Lying down so the antenna is touching the table (not a metal table) or chair (not a metal chair) causes most signals and images to come through quite clearly. Extending the antenna to medium length helps reception. Extending it all the way introduces a lot of interference. On FM, volume also changes a lot. We may reasonably expect for the signal to change if we connect something conductive to the antenna by, say, touching it with our conductive fingers. Maybe reception will get more static, or maybe it will in fact improve. What we don\u2019t expect is for the broadcast to switch from comfortable volume to let\u2019s see if we can get you some tinnitus volume. Unfortunately, that\u2019s sometimes what happens on FM if you touch the R9012\u2019s antenna. Or tilt it a bit in the wrong direction. This doesn\u2019t seem to happen much if it is tuned onto a station, but if it is anywhere in the middle or if there\u2019s some static, the volume change is very noticeable, in that it makes you want to get the radio off as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

In summary, this radio just can\u2019t really do FM. If your other radios are broken, you\u2019ll be fine by using this, but don\u2019t buy it if you intend to do FM things.<\/p>\n

Mediumwave performance<\/h2>\n

The MW frequencies are mostly there, with stated specs including from 525 to 1610 kHz. While there are broadcasts between 1610 and 1710 KHZ, that\u2019s not a ton of the spectrum. I don\u2019t have much interest in MW. I tested the radio\u2019s performance, and it seems fine. Strong stations come in loud and clear. Stations that have low broadcast powers are easy to tune in. I was able to get some skywave MW in here as well, but I really don\u2019t have any interest in that. I was able to verify, however, that the terrible effects that plague FM performance don\u2019t appear on MW. I got no images of distant stations, no rapid volume switches, and the position of the radio doesn\u2019t seem to affect MW reception all that much. Perhaps this is due to the different antenna that most radios employ in tuning MW. However, the manual doesn\u2019t say whether this radio has such an alternative antenna and I haven\u2019t gone to the effort of disassembling it to find out.<\/p>\n

Shortwave performance<\/h2>\n

Once again, the crazy stuff seen on the FM band doesn\u2019t appear during shortwave listening. I was able to tune in quite a few stations, although this probably isn\u2019t a DX-capable device unless you\u2019re willing to go out into RFI-free areas. That sounds enjoyable, but it\u2019s not really my thing. When I got signal, it came in quite clearly. I got very little interference from the device itself, although it does seem quite susceptible to RFI from power lines. Of course, so is everything else, but if you put its antenna closer to a line, you\u2019d know it.<\/p>\n

Frequency coverage<\/h2>\n

Shortwave is covered in ten bands that allow access to the more populated areas of the spectrum, but have many gaps. Certain descriptions claim that the radio has coverage from 3.90 to 21.85 MHz. This is so misleading I\u2019d be willing to call it a lie. The actual ranges are as follows:<\/p>\n