SANGEAN ATS-909X2, Ultimate FM/SW/MW/LW/Air Multi-Band Radio

With such a wide range of bands to explore, there’s a lot to like about this radio. Mine, however, had a faulty antenna circuit. When you’d plug in an antenna (I tried 2) the volume on a shortwave or AM station already receivable without an external antenna would drop by 50% when using the AC adapter. The volume drop was even worse when using batteries. At first I thought perhaps there was an internal/external antenna switch that had to be adjusted but I saw nothing like that on the unit or referenced in the instruction book. This was very disappointing because I got it for a great Amazon price. Thankfully Amazon makes returns very simple. I may try ordering this item again, provided inflation and the ongoing supply chain issues don’t drive the price too high.Round Two (Update August 27, 2022)With a number of months having passed since trying my first 909X2, I felt it was time to reorder. When the radio arrived I installed 4 alkaline batteries, strung the included wire antenna across my basement ceiling and got to work.The first order of business was to see how the antenna input would work on shortwave. Given my location (the basement), I felt the wire antenna did very well on this second radio. It didn’t drop the volume at all like it did with the first one. Secondly, the radio worked even better with my Godar DXR-1000 antenna that I have yet to have installed on the house. This antenna is designed for use with 75 ohm coax. (An adapter is needed to connect coax to the 909X2.) So it appears that this set is capable of operating quite well with a varied range of antennas.Unfortunately there’s bad news. This radio has a scanning feature that allows you to quickly jump from one meter band to another. This feature didn’t work on mine. At a certain point when trying to set this feature up the meter band indicator is supposed to flash but it wouldn’t. I even tried resetting the radio and it just wouldn’t work.Another suspicious issue involved the tuning wheel. Initially it wouldn’t work at all. I did a reset and from then on the wheel worked as it should. How long it would have continued to operate is anyone’s guess. Btw…my radio’s firmware was version 073.For these reasons, this radio also went back. I wanted to give Sangean an opportunity to impress me as much as they have via their WR-11 wood table radio. With the exception of the severely narrow-banded AM sound, it’s a nice radio. In my opinion, this radio and it’s siblings would be the best table sets on the market if Sangean would see fit to include a wide-band/narrow-band switch for AM on the back. In fact, the WR-11 outperforms my GE Superadio when both radios are operated using the CCrane twin coil ferrite antenna.So…2 faulty 909X2 sets in a row. Hopefully your purchase experience will be better.April 2024 Update:FirmwareOne of the first things I did was to check the firmware version. 078 is the latest and I was pleased to see that mine is from this batch.AntennasThis radio seems to prefer higher impedance antennas when connecting through the 3.5mm antenna jack. Lower Impedance antennas work better when attaching them via alligator clip to the telescoping antenna.TuningTuning is executed via a ridged thumb wheel that is flush with the face of the radio. The idea is that as you hold the radio, you can extend your right thumb and spin the wheel to tune. On the left side of the wheel there are two seek/scan bars, the upper one is for tuning up while the lower one handles moving down the spectrum.There’s also an interesting “step” button in the middle of the tuning wheel. Pressing this button changes the length of the tuning steps for both the tuning wheel as well as the seek/scan bars. Hold it for about a full second and it disables the tuning wheel. I suspect I unknowingly engaged this feature on my second radio and ended up thinking that this was one of the things that was wrong with it. When it happened again on my current radio, I dove back into the manual and found out about the disable feature but fail to see its purpose. I thought maybe this was added so in case you leave the room for some reason, your kids or grandkids can’t come along and accidentally move you off frequency. What I find unusual is that this function doesn’t also disable the keypad or the tuning bars.AM ReceptionIn a word: terrific. So far the best reception occurs when I use a Tecsun AN-48X amplified antenna. When used on a camera tripod to allow for directional focus, this antenna is a great indoor reception option. During a nighttime band scan, from 540kHz up to about 1200kHz there was a station (or stations) to be heard every 10kHz. After that the band was very crowded but some great DX still came through. From my Midwest location I was receiving many stations from Canada to Texas and the Deep South to the East coast. So as far as AM is concerned, this radio/antenna combination is a winner!FM ReceptionMy 909X2 picked up 53 stations off the whip antenna. That’s 5 short of the record at my location which is held by my CCrane CCRadio3. Nonetheless, that is exceptional.SW ReceptionI’m not a collector of SW radios so I won’t be providing comparisons with other brands. However, I’m surprised by those who claim there’s little to listen to on SW, or worse yet, that this radio is deaf on SW. In the latter case, there may be a reason for that and it has nothing to do with a faulty radio. The manual clearly states that you need to have the gain control turned up to “Max” in order to hear anything on SW. Utilizing the Tecsun AN-48X antenna, during one listening session I picked up 23 stations in an area of the spectrum ranging from 4.84 to 9.71MHzSSB ReceptionWhen you come across what might appear to be a SSB transmission in SW mode, press the SSB button. Continue to press this button and you’ll see in the display that it toggles between AM, lower sideband (LSB) and upper sideband (USB). The manual indicates that amateur radio operators transmitting below 10MHz generally use the lower sideband while amateur and commercial stations transmitting above that frequency generally use the upper sideband. Choose the sideband that gives the best reception. Next, press the step button in the middle of the rotary tuning wheel that I referenced earlier to select the slow stepping mode. Then rotate the rotary tuning wheel to fine tune the voice transmission. The minimum fine tuning steps are set at 20Hz by default. This can be changed via the menu to 10Hz.Some folks complain because the radio has only one preset bandwidth for SSB. I’m fine with that because the one they chose sounds very clear to me. Still others complain because they say the SSB volume is very low compared to regular shortwave transmissions. Assuming they have the RF gain jog wheel at max where it should be, you still should expect lower volume because obviously you’re only receiving the energy from one side band. Yes, there’s a difference in volume, but on my radio it’s certainly not objectionable.Birdies and BreakthroughIn 3 months of occasional usage thoroughly going through AM, FM and SW, I’ve yet to experience any birdies. However, on one occasion when using the Tecsun antenna I did experience some low volume breakthrough on SW in spots from approximately 2.2 to 2.7MHz. 2.3MHz is the second harmonic of a local, high power AM station whose tower site is about 15 miles away so this interference isn’t surprising. If this is happening to you, simply divide the frequency where it’s occurring (in kHz) by 2 and that should give you the approximate frequency of the offending station. I should add that this “breakthrough” didn’t occur when using the built-in telescopic antenna.Later in the day, and using the Tecsun antenna once again, I tuned through this range because this particular station reduces it’s power post sunset. The power reduction did lower the number and intensity of the incidents. While people may assume the radio is being overloaded by the amplified antenna, It could actually be spurious emissions from the station. The only way to know for sure would be to contact the engineer of the station.Battery Power DetailsI’m using rechargeable batteries. In their pre-charged state, straight from the package, they gave me about 10 hours of listening time. Recharging the batteries took over 4 hours on the radio’s built in charger and I’m assuming the play time moving forward will be even better. This radio is unique in that it not only tells you via the screen when the batteries need recharging or are finished with the charging process, it also informs you if one of the batteries is faulty.ConclusionThere is so much this radio can be set up to do. There’s nearly 2 full pages in the manual just on using, storing, recalling, locking, deleting, moving and renaming preset stations. There’s also the ability to scan only within specific meter bands, the use of 3 alarm timers, how to use the record standby/line-out jacks, squelch, automatic bandwidth and much more.In the end, while it was frustrating having to deal with two faulty radios to get one that works right, I’m glad I stuck with it. I’m enjoying this one very much and I hope you enjoy yours too!

This is a superb radio. I'm a ham radio operator and have used a lot of radios, including the predecessor of this one. The original Sangean 909 has always been a pleasant radio to use with a lot of nice features, but had been lacking in a few key areas, including sensitivity. This is all fixed with the version 2, and now this radio is the complete package of nice operation and great performance. On my first night, I already spent a few hours listening in on 80m in SSB, all with the built-in whip. AM and FM are also great and the sound quality is very good.Update: After a few days and nights with the radio, I like it even more. Originally I was a bit disappointed that they did not add a synch detector. But it turns out that ECSS works impressively well on this radio. (ECSS is a fancy term for listening to AM broadcast stations in single side band mode, to remove audio distortions caused by signal fading). In fact it works better than synch detectors on many other radios, as there is no need for a synch detector to "lock on". Just switch to SSB if you have a weak or fading station, and it becomes very stable, and audio quality is good.Update 2:I had the chance now to directly compare this radio with the latest Tecsun PL-990. Here are my observations. All based on using the built-in whip antenna.- On 49m in AM mode, in the evening: Signals are weak here on the west coast in general, but both radios make the best of it. There was no station that one radio received that I could not also hear on the other. The sound quality is quite similar. The noise floor on the Tecsun is perhaps a bit better, and weak signals very slightly more understandable. While the Sangean subjectively sounds better, especially when the signals are a bit stronger. Overall I would say it is a tie. I'd be happy with either one of them.- Still on 49m, listening to AM broadcast stations, but now switching to single side band mode. The Tecsun has a Synch detector mode for this. Turning it on first results in several seconds of silence (audio muted), while the display shows some kind of "busy" icon. This is annoying, and it soon gets old when switching forth and back often. Once the Synch detector is finally on, the sound becomes muffled, and slightly distorted. The Sangean does not have a Synch mode, so I use LSB directly (kind of a manual ECSS, as described above). In this mode, the sound is great, and clearly beats the Tecsun here. The Tecsun allows to switch bandwidths in SSB and Synch modes. Even with the widest bandwidth of 4kHz, the sound is still muffled. The Sangean only provides a single bandwidth in SSB mode, a fact that originally irked me. But whatever bandwidth Sangean implemented here, it sounds very good!- Next up, let's listen to ham radio stations on 80m in SSB. Here, the Tecsun shows the same muffled sound I observed above. In addition, there is more distortion now. It appears to me that the beginning of each transmission (the first syllable spoken by the ham) is being clipped in the RF amp by the Tecsun. This would mean that they have AGC turned on in SSB mode, and with a pretty short time constant at that. Not good! The Sangean sounds cleaner and smoother here. It has manual gain control via a small wheel on the left side, as it should be. In addition, I noticed that the Sangean appears to be very slightly more sensitive. When listening in on a ham radio "ragchew" with stations across America, I could follow all of them on the Sangean (albeit with some difficulty for the weakest ones), while weak stations on the Tecsun occasionally dropped out. Mind you, this difference was very slight. In most cases, both radios performed the same. Overall though, just based on sound and distortion, this point goes to Sangean.- I also tried the 20m ham radio band during the day. Findings were very similar to what I described above on 80m, except both radios were really equally sensitive now.- Some remarks on the physical aspects and operation of these radios: The Tecsun is noticeably more compact, which is really nice! I also preferred the tuning and volume wheels on the right, over the Sangean. These controls on the Tecsun are pleasant to operate, with one thumb if needed. The volume control on the Sangean needs to be gripped with thumb and index finger to operate, and the tuning dial on the front is workable, but not my cup of tea. I also liked that the Tecsun allows to turn on the display backlight permanently when desired. On the other hand, the buttons on the Sangean are bigger and more pleasant to operate, and it has the large display. The whip antenna is larger and a lot more sturdy! The last element on the whip antenna of the Tecsun is very flimsy indeed and I almost bent it already after just one hour of operation. You need to be very gentle with it.- As for features: The Sangean has RDS and the air band, while the Tecsun has an MP3 player and bluetooth. It depends here what your preference is. The sound quality of both radios on FM is very good. I did not compare them on the AM broadcast band yet, maybe in another update.Overall, both radios are very good and I'd be happy with either one, but I'd give the edge to the Sangean.