Nooelec RTL-SDR v5 SDR - NESDR SMArt HF/VHF/UHF (100kHz-1.75GHz) Software Defined Radio. Premium RTLSDR w/ 0.5PPM TCXO, SMA Input & Aluminum Enclosure. RTL2832U & R820T2 (R860)-Based Radio

I was hesitant to buy this as I wasn't sure of its compatibility with OpenWebRX, and I need not have worried.I flashed OpenWebRX to an SD card, put it into a Pi4, and it's run seamlessly.It seems sensitive enough on HF, VHF, and UHF, and I will be buying a second one (one connected to a discone and the second to an HF antenna).I have a 20-year-old discone with 10 m of RG58, and I'm still hearing planes on 1090 MHz at 70 miles.The limitation is you can only see 3.2 MHz of bandwidth at a time, but this is better than most cheap dongles.I would recommend this as a good start into SDR; the frequency range went lower than most of the other dongles, and it has better frequency stability.

I bought this because I've had a Nooelec SDR dongle previously and wanted to add HF reception for shortwave and ham listening. It's easy to set up using their get started page and it basically uses the same drivers and utilities as other RTl-SDR dongles, which makes things relatively easy. I've tested it on Windows, Raspberry Pi Zero 2W and Android, all working well with standard drivers and apps. The ony thing I would say for Android though is that the current maxes out around 300mA (so says the datasheet anyway), so for extended usage you'd probably want a powered USB hub /otg-cable (you can get USB-C PD ones online for a few buckpounds).While I have a Hamitup for lower frequencies I wanted to have HF in the dongle for casual scanning and for ease of carrying when going away and doing a bit of holiday DXing. Obviously that means I expect the HF reception not to be as good as an upconvertor, but I was pleasantly surprised by the range of shortwave stations, the limited noise, and audio quality, I got just using a few metres of wire and the Balun 1:9 (a Nooelec SDR accessory for making long wire antennas).So overall it seems a pretty impressive and inexpensive USB RTL-SDR dongle for everyone from beginners to ham operators, especially those who want an easy way into shortwave and HF ham listening.

Really easy setup works with Windows 11 perfectly

Really great little device that was up and running quickly using SD# (SDR Sharp) and several plugins for Scanning and DMR decoding - the latter much easier than when I tried this in the early days of such dongles. Howerver . . . the device kept freezing withing a day of getting it and by elimination, it was because even the slightest movement of the device in my laptop's USB port or in a USB Hub would kill it. I can only assume there's a defective connection inside this particular dongle - returned and immediate refund issued after drop-off at a local Amazon Fresh store here in the City of London. I have reordered though and this time with the Ham it Up Bundle which I'l looking forward to using. Can wait to take this kit out of the city and try some other modes - satellite reception maybe?

UPDATE: December 2021. This was a great buy. Having used it for tracking weather balloon signals; low earth orbit satellites and FM radio DX'ing! .... it has proven to be an excellent SDR, not only for the price but for its dynamic range and sensitivity.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I bought this RTL-SDR to replace the Nooelec NESDR Mini 2. I believe the Mini 2 had deteriorated; no physical damage that I could see, but it had gone 'deaf' and was not performing well on a couple of different SDR applications ... HD-SDR, SDRUno and CubicSDR.The SMART v4 has a better dynamic range, better overall sensitivity and is more stable.I use it primarily in a SatGate set-up; I-gating ISS APRS packets to the Internet/ARISS and it is much more capable of obtaining virtually 100% successful decodes than its predecessor (Mini2).I would recommend it.

This is advertised as HF to 1.75 ghz, worked well on VHF/UHF and seemingly from 15m/21mhz band upwards. Anything below this in the lower/mid HF bands is a no go. I have a very capable fan dipole, plus a 40m long doublet that covers all the amateur radio bands from 28mhz down. Couldn't find a signal on 17m downwards to 80m. When I loaded the devices definition into SDR-Console (SDR program for Windows) it showed up as an RTL USB device covering 25mhz-1.75ghz. I believe you probably need the Ham It Up Convertor to make it work on all the HF amateur bands. Returned the device for a refund.

Manage your expectations, better than the 15-20 pound dongles but not like the airspy dongles.For me it worked well though I had to use an old cpu heatsink to keep temps down for digital voice. Gets hot very quickly.Very sensitive to nudges and bumps while in use and doesnt help usb A ports are weak so not very user friendly.Despite all that it's a good fit for introduction to the hobby

I used this with a Raspberry Pi 4 to receive and send data to FlightRadar24. At first it worked ok but had a habit of not sending data for no apparent reason. A reboot did the trick and got it working yet again. I noticed that it got very hot and wondered if the heat had anything to do with it malfunctioning. After yet another reboot for the same reason, it failed to send data for the umpteenth time. I concluded that it was dead. I removed this device and installed a similar but not identical one. The latter worked fine on the same set-up and while it got warm, as expected, it was not nearly so hot as the Nooelec.