V4 R828D RTL2832U 1PPM TCXO SMA Software Defined Radio (Dongle Only)

Working great so far although its not exactly "plug and play" (which I expected) .. I'm using a Pi3 with the PI-SDR image. Works great with SDR++ on the image. The one issue I'm having is not being able to pickup AM broadcast bands. I suspect thats antenna related but not sure yet. This has been fun to play around with. Not allot going in my area with uv- vf so cant comment on that yet. I have a MLA-30+ antenna coming soon. Will update here more after that. I can say its definitely an improvement over ver 3 just because of the increased coverage. Looking forward to installing on a android tablet .Update - works great. Overall .. these are cludgy to use compared to a dedicated radio, but fun and allow you to learn and experiment with several spectrums of RF. I was finally able to get AM but ended up installing and using on a Win11 machine. You will probably want to set up multiple antennas to use with one of these. The MLA 30+ works great on HF and lower bands but truly doesnt perform well at all above 30 MHz (expected). For that I'm going to try a simple setup with a DPDT switch and use a long wire (by long I mean about 15 feet strung along the floor). The ability to go lower in the bands makes this a worthwhile purchase. I never went the route of the upconverter before because of the added cost and hassle . Plenty to experiment with and learn. Now that I feel like I have the antenna situation addressed and have a baseline I can start tweaking the software and bookmarking stations. Nice to have good sounding stereo FM radio available on my PC setup as well. I still have a couple things I want to try - like going portable in the camper, completing a comparison of SD# and SD++, things like that. This thing will keep me busy for a while.

This works as advertised and is great value. The software the manufacturer recommends is very easy to use.

Works quite well, performs great in the hf range, and the vhf/uhf bands are good too. Worked with the software I have tried it with ( it does require an updated driver but most of what I have is already equipped. ) Price is good, is the original item, not a clone. Recommended

I have the older version of this, these things work great for what they are and you will have lots of fun listening to all the different bands. Make sure you have a good antenna.

NOTE: For those encountering issues on Linux - as of 04/30/2024, YOU NEED TO COMPLETELY UNINSTALL AND BLACKLIST ANY DEFAULT RTL-SDR DRIVER ON YOUR TARGET SYSTEM AND BUILD THE DRIVERS FROM SOURCE, OTHERWISE YOU WILL HIT ISSUES TRYING TO PICK UP ANY FREQUENCIES INCLUDING NORMAL FM STATIONS. I talk about this later in my review.WITH REGARDS TO WINDOWS: You will need to download the drivers (.dll) directly from RTL-SDR Blog and PLACE THEM INTO THE INSTALLATION FOLDER OF YOUR PARTICULAR SDR SOFTWARE REPLACING THE EXISTING rtl_sdr.dll - Otherwise you will hit the same issues.I needed a cheap SDR dongle with an SMA connector for a home project that wasn't occupied, and I decided to give these guys a try after using their blog articles extensively over the last 8 years. My intended use-case was a Raspberry Pi and occasionally a Linux laptop, but interestingly the easiest platform for me was Win10.The V4 feels pretty well built; it does not get nearly as hot as my older NooElecs, but it's physically larger. It does suffer the same issue as every other aluminum-encased SDR, where if you try to fight gravity with a USB port, you will probably flex the USB port. On SBCs, this is a pretty easy fix - just put it on the lowest possible USB port or use a USB-A extension cable.As mentioned previously; mine DID NOT immediately work out of the box on either Linux or Win10, but in sort of a bizarre way where SDR software could see the dongle and I could start an audio stream, but frequencies were either non-existent or not at all where they should be. Even after a cursory attempt at trying to follow RTL-SDR Blog's guide, I was pretty sure I had a dud until I tried an older Windows 10 laptop and their provided driver for SDR++, where I picked up all the frequencies I'd intended to monitor in the first place. Once I made sure it worked there, I realized that because I kept trying to use GQRX, I was somehow reinstalling + loading the base rtl-chipset driver and obliterating the compiled driver. After testing on a secondary Linux laptop, I verified that THIS DOES WORK WITH UBUNTU BASED DISTROS AFTER FOLLOWING THE STEPS EXACTLY AS THEY ARE OUTLINED BY RTL-SDR BLOG.Performance is fairly good - this is much cheaper than I remember paying for my NESDRs, but isn't nearly as "deaf" seeming as the plastic-encased rtl dongles I've had. There are a few areas where it seems slightly less receptive compared to my older NESDRs and my HackRF, but again, this is $10 cheaper and still outperforms the cheapest available dongle on Amazon - and I'm definitely not using an external antenna and giving it a truly fair shot. Heat actually seems much better than the SDRs too; I haven't tested this extensively and I have no tangible numbers to provide, but I haven't found myself worrying about burning something with it.I have not tested the new drivers with older existing dongles, but RSB reports that they are backwards compatible - I admit that I haven't tested this, but in my case I only need it to work on one system.TL;DR: Some driver mods required, pretty solid for the price.

Works well as long as you follow installation instructions.

Although it took a few steps (follow their online guide precisely) to get the driver's installed correctly on an older Windows 10 system (finally having to use Zadig to get it done), it works perfectly! Sound quality, sensitivity and flexibility really gives you soooo many option for a wide range of receiving pursuits.I have seen a lot of reviews that trash the receiver because they weren't able to correctly follow directions in installing the new drivers so didn't hear anything. I guarantee you that if you follow their very good directions and recommendations, you will be rewarded by having a great and absolutely endless range of fun listening ahead. Getting SDR systems (especially the wide range of software that supports this receiver) setup can be challenging for beginning listeners, but it's also a wonderful learning experience. Be patient with yourself, and you can have a tremendous monitoring station at an unheard of price value.The built in HF up converter provides a much better HF listening experience than the direct sampling on other brands and previous SDR dongles.Highly recommend this as THE BEST way to enjoy radio listening cross a huge variety of useful spectrums.