Review on RTL-SDR Blog R820T2 RTL2832U 1PPM TCXO SMA SDR Dongle (Device Only) by Chris Parrott

I am very impressed with this receiver. I have been involved in amateur radio and shortwave listening for over 50 years and have been involved in two-way radio communications for almost as long. I have tested the RTL-SDR both on a test bench and at my home radio amateur station. I'm amazed how well it works. One thing has to be understood. It doesn't matter if the radio is a $20 USB dongle or a $5,000 luxury receiver; A radio is only as good as the antenna you connect it to. At home I hooked up the RTL-SDR to the same antennas I use with my $1300 Icom transceiver. I couldn't find any signals that I could hear on the Icom that the key couldn't hear. Additionally, the dongle did an almost equally good job of separating signals on crowded ham radio bands thanks to configurable bandwidth management in the SDR# software. The receiver is NOT an easy task. You should be able to follow the setup instructions on the quick start page. You need decent antennas that match the frequency bands you want to hear. An antenna that works well on VHF and UHF search frequencies is useless for receiving on HF or AM broadcast frequencies. A basic understanding of how communication receivers work is very helpful. However, you need to get familiar with the software and many of its features are not "intuitive". In my opinion, the RTL-SDR is the cheapest receiver ever built. Bob Mason WB8CAC