I recently gave myself a small Christmas gift of a Xiegu G90. I have been eyeing them off for a number of months, and a large client order associated with one of my businesses provided the funds to order one.
It is a HF SDR that covers 1.8Mhz through to 30Mhz – it actually tunes down to the AM broadcast band without any issues. I already have a Xiegu X108 that I enjoy using for QRP activation.
Receive sensitivity is good and it has the capacity of punching out 20 Watts with a built in antenna tuner. It also has a great list of built in features;
- SDR ( Software Defined Radio ) architecture
- All band shortwave radio
- USB, LSB, CW, and AM demodulation
- 20 watt output
- Built in automatic antenna tuner
- Separate analog input and output for digital modes
- 40 x 120 x 180 mm
- Hand mike with button control – Same as the Xeigu X108
- Useful waterfall on a 1.5 inch OLED display.
So far, I am really happy with its performance. It compares well with the X108 and Yeasu FT817, with the SDR advantages of a waterfall display as default. I have always loved Software Defined Radios and have a few of them including a RS918 clone of the McHF as well as a HackRF with SDR Sharp. The advantage of this over the RS918 is that the build quality is superb.
My one small frustration is that the front panel buttons are very poorly illuminated as can be seen from the photo above. All of the buttons are all molded from a single piece of ‘light distributing ‘ rubber. The buttons below the OLED display are beautifully bright, illuminated from the bottom of the OLED display. Sadly, because there are no illumination LEDs under the buttons located further away from the screen they are very hard to read in low light. I wonder if I can install a couple of white LEDs to improve display visibility.
I’m looking forward to using it for Digital modes, such as FT8 and RTTY using my trusty Dell rugged laptop.
G’Day DOUG, I’m Peter VK2IN in Terrigal. I liked your review of the Xiegu G90 – thanks! I really appreciate your review of it. And I would like to buy one. Oh, btw I’m 70 years young and want to get back into ham radio after a 50+ year abscence from the hobby. Do you sell that transceiver? A company called Techsun in Brookvale sells them but they don’t have a phone number- so I’ll stay away from them! I was considering a used Ft-450D and an ft-857d but they are out of this retirees budget. I’m glad that you said that receive sensitivity is good, and I’m hoping the background noise is muted? Because of limited funds I would consider a used one. My email is down again, arrgh! but my phone numer is 02 43 278 961 after 7pm. I would really appreciate talking to you and maybe soon on 40 metres? All the best and 73, from Peter
I don’t think my email works!