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.

Took me a while of trial and error to get this to work properly in an SDR software. I put that blame onto the software, though, not the hardware.

Fantastic for the price. I got one of the first SDR Play RSPdx boxes and was completely disappointed. The hardware seems like it could be good but the software is an unusable mess, and getting all the switching and filtering to work with other software never worked. After being frustrated with endless trouble tickets and support that clearly didn't have a clue, I gave up. I had a buyer for the SDR Play on craigs but at the end of the day I wouldn't have been able to sleep after selling him that useless piece of garbage. Fast forward to the RTL-SDR V3 with a HamItUp. Worked a lot better than the SDR Play (what doesn't?) but it was noisy and switching it on and off and turning on the offset in the software was a pain. I ordered the RTL-SDR V4 the moment I first saw it and I am impressed. It works (unlike the SDR Play, which isn't even a good paperweight), it's several dB quieter than the HamItUp and there is no offset to deal with. This is a real winner, and at the price it's a bargain. I have a couple of V4 in the USB-C version on order and can't wait to get them.

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 great. It took awhile to install the software but less thann30 minutes

The V4 version is the best RTL-SDR hands down. It is usable and easier to use on HF than V3. On the VHF/UHF bands, it does a much better job filtering out extraneous signals and noise from out of band, allowing you to boost the gain a bit for an optimal signal.Make sure you are using the right driver and SDR software that is enabled for the V4. Most of the popular software is now set up to accept the new device, but if you aren't seeing any signals, that is the likely reason. Double check your setup and you'll be rewarded.Since this is a limited run of this version, I'm picking up another one while there is still stock and pairing it with the dipole antenna kit, which is also a simple way to get up and running on VHF/UHF.