Nooelec RTL-SDR v5 Bundle - NESDR Smart HF/VHF/UHF (100kHz-1.75GHz) Software Defined Radio. Premium RTLSDR w/ 0.5PPM TCXO, SMA Input, Aluminum Enclosure & 3 Antennas. RTL2832U & R820T2-Based Radio

I enjoy using this SDR. The software is easy to install and it works right away after it is installed. It takes a while to familiarize with the display software, if I may, but once you get used to them, everything is easy. I recommend thisfor beginners like me. You get somewhat complete stuff for the price.

I purchased this tuner to use with a Raspberry Pi for an inexpensive VHF/UHF receiver. It works very well for that purpose considering it is broadband tuner and doesn't have tuned front-end bandpass filters. I live within 5-10 miles of some powerful paging transmitters and a NOAA weather transmitter and they don't seem to degrade the performance of the tuner when it is listening elsewhere. Quite acceptable performance considering the cost.The included antenna pack works well for VHF/UHF and the cable is long enough to place the antenna away from the Raspberry Pi. You can also connect an outdoor antenna to the SMA connector if you need better performance.Installing the drivers was not difficult and Nooelec sent along instructions that were easy to follow. When using the Zadig utility, be very careful when selecting the device to install. Don't rush and you will be fine. One of our club members accidentally selected his Bluetooth adapter instead of the SDR dongle and it took a bit of work to undo that mistake. This is not the fault of Noolec (or Zadig actually) -- to one who is given much power, much responsibility is required.Please note that these units (as do any SDR dongles) run hot, even with the all metal case to dissipate the heat, so be careful touching the case after it has been running for a period of time. Although I would prefer that the operating temperature would be lower, it doesn't seem to impact performance and hopefully product life. I have a Nooelec Nano 3 and that runs even hotter and has been in service for some time now without issues.Nooelec has been very responsive when I have contacted them and shipped my orders promptly, even with the current pandemic.All in all, a solid and inexpensive way to experiment with Software Defined Radio.

Gets hot, and sometimes REALLY hot. Kind of weird how something that's meant to receive radio signals would get so hot... Can't quite cook an egg on it until trying to use it all day, so that's something. Definitely need to augment cooling. Otherwise, as far as functionality, it's mostly plug and play. They have a program and some drivers you have to download in windows to get everything to work properly, which they don't clearly tell you about. Once that's done it works very well and is reasonably sensitive with the provided antennas. However, one big downside is that (again they don't tell you this) is that to receive ham radio signals you need extra stuff to connect to it. Also, TV is a no go since this thing does not have the bandwidth capacity needed. Works well for AM/FM radio and aviation, etc....Linux usage was pretty much plug and play. Only thing I had to do really after connecting it was installing software that could use it, and the most popular one works great on Linux. There's actually a bunch of tools on Linux, under the task-hamradio apt metapackage.Overall, it's not a horrible value for the money, and decent enough for basic needs. The heat and limited bandwidth issues are huge drawbacks.Unfortunately though, to get a unit that can do TV, you're spending more than $300. So, for what it does I guess it's not a horrible value. I kept mine since it comes in handy sometimes.

When I bought this little SDR, I was a bit discouraged by how it took extra work to get it to function on windows. It eventually did and performed well... for a while (both in windows and linux). It had success working with SDR#, HDSDR, GQRX, and I suspect it would have worked with any SDR software. Well, I used it successfully yesterday and had no mishaps storing it as usual, however, today it does not work at all. It didn't last 6 months (more like a week of actual use). I seldom used it until the last two months when I began to learn how much more I could do with a SDR. I have no explanation nor advice on how to avoid this- it just quit working. I have tried (un/re)installing (yes, I know about Zadig). No changes were made to the system it was used on yesterday. It was powered off, then powered on today and it doesn't work anymore. This is NOT an installation or user issue. I have tried it on multiple ports and more than one system, windows, linux, nothing. Before this, I definitely would have given it 5 stars. This makes me a sad panda.Now I get to play the warranty game. I am extremely grateful for the 2-year warranty... now, how to go about starting that?**UPDATE**I spoke with the NooElec support team at: [email protected] must admit to being a bit surprised. Their response was incredibly fast. In fact, it was almost immediate. It was so late in the night, I didn't bother looking for a response, but it was there, and didn't appear to be a scripted automatic response. Their support was amazing. Even through email, Sarah was quite pleasant and easy to work with. The information I provided seemed uninformative to me, but I gave all the steps I took to troubleshoot, my observations and also the two screenshots I put here (my details were a bit more expansive than what I put here). It was all that was needed to determine what was wrong. In my case, it was not deemed worthy of salvage or further troubleshooting. This is apparently a rare issue as all NooElec stuff is burn-tested for 24 hours. A bad one got through, but that sort of thing inevitably happens to almost everyone's product. I'm not trying to be a commercial, or sound like their PR, lol... just expressing pleasant surprise. A 2 year warranty speaks pretty highly by itself!A replacement is now on the way. Looking forward to it. I wish all warranty support went this easily. If it weren't such an easy process and an experience which also gave me so much confidence in their products, I would have only taken the 1star to a 4star. This went so smoothly and painlessly, it deserves 5 stars. I had been pondering which SDR brand to toy with next after this one broke... but after this warranty support, I will definitely be buying more of these! I am a loyal customer now... and my first one was a dud.If you are shopping for SDRs, get one of these. If it breaks, they'll take care of you.