📡 Unlock the airwaves with precision and power—your SDR game just leveled up!
The RTL-SDR Blog V4 R828D RTL2832U dongle is a high-performance software defined radio receiver featuring a 1 PPM temperature compensated oscillator, a broad 500 kHz to 1.7 GHz tuning range, and advanced filtering with a built-in HF upconverter. Its aluminum shielded case with thermal pad ensures passive cooling, while the activatable bias tee circuit powers external devices via SMA. Ideal for professionals seeking stable, clear, and versatile RF reception.
Brand Name | RTL-SDR Blog |
Item Weight | 1.06 ounces |
Product Dimensions | 2.76 x 5.31 x 0.59 inches |
Country of Origin | China |
Color Name | Black |
B**.
Nice upgrade from ver 3
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.
D**S
Would recommend.
Installation can be a PITA but there are videos and instructions online.Once you're up and running, you'll be blown away by what you can pick up with even a modest antenna.
A**.
Useful tool
Love using this for pulling weather satellite images
L**R
It aates AMD with Sdrtrunk, & windows updates, but I still love it
4 stars because I love what it can do. But it definitely has some things you should know before you buy.I use sdrtrunk with windows. I also have a le potato that I've tried it on, with trunkrecorder.The combo of this dongle and SDRtrunk for windows just will not work on my AMDs properly. Flaky and random bus errors. Doesn't matter if I'm using USB 2.0 or 3.x. Doesn't matter if I'm using a powered hub. Doesn't matter if I'm using different ports. Just consistently bad. I tried every combination possible, and every solution online. Big waste of time.But it works fabulously even on every intel - including a 15+ yr old one. Both windows 10 and windows 11. BUT with one big caveat - Windows updates change the driver periodically UGH. When this happens, you have to manually use Zadig software to reinstall it - and it's not the most intuitive process, especially if you have multiple dongles. And you don't know it's a problem until you see that the tuners are showing just error messages. So I've resorted to pausing Windows updates for 30 days at a time, and then just doing them manually.I have 3 dongles (two v4 and one v3) hooked up to a USB 3 powered hub, uploading to both broadcastify and openmhz. It just works!One other caveat - if you get two dongles of the same version, for some programs you will need to use separate software to go in and change the ID number of one. Otherwise it gets confused. No problems once I did this step.On the le potato they just worked right out of the box.Highly recommend if you are looking for a cheap ems/fire/police scanner for nonencrypted areas.But you DO need someone who knows what they're doing helping you to get the software setup. Even getting advice on places like radio reference isn't quite enough if you're getting into this from scratch. But I love having this now that I've had a few months to play with it and enjoy!
J**Y
spend the money get the real deal
best thing i have ordered works great easy setup
E**Y
Amazingly good receiver, especially for how little it costs
I found the v4 a substantial improvement over the v3, especially for HF (also known as shortwave) signals. It's also excellent for FM broadcast-band reception, although not as sensitive as my Airspy HF+ Discovery in that it cannot receive a station I enjoy that is 40 miles (64 km) away. The Airspy receiver has no problem hearing that station, but then the Airspy costs almost five times more than the v4. I consider the v4 an outstandingly good value for how little it costs. Also: the v4's two connectors ... to the antenna and to the computer ... work much better than those on the Airspy. A slight jiggle tends to interrupt the Airspy signal, requiring me to restart my SDR++ app, but that doesn't happen with the v4. I have attached small stick-on heat sinks to both sides of it (see photo) since it runs warm and I will be using it outdoors in hot weather.
F**E
Funciona correctamente
Si sirve para escuchar radio me hubiera gustado que trajera antenas mucho más precisas o grandes para otros tipos de señal me tocó comprarla por aparte igual manera es lo que quieras escuchar depende la antena no se sobre calienta él disposición funciona muy bien es algo engorrroso el software pero pues hay muchos videos de cómo usarlo en youtube la idea es escuchar emisoras de otros países y enterarse de información de primera mano sin que los medios de comunicación politizados sean un problema
U**T
Does what it says
First time setting up a Raspberry Pi device for ADS-B Tracking and needed a receiver. I read the reviews, and was a bit hesitant. I purchased it, figured I could always send back. I installed Raspberry Pi, followed the directions to update the driver, rebooted, and it works as advertised. I have had the station up and feeding for a month flawlessly.
Trustpilot
1 day ago
1 month ago