REVIEW: TECSUN PL-660
BY THOMAS BROOKS—KG5ZSU
AUGUST 2021

	I must admit, the price didn’t seem to reflect what specs this thing was advertised with. For about $100, including an antenna, carrying bag, batteries, and charger, AND SSB reception, AND great reviews, I couldn’t pass this one up. 
	But I wish I would have. Its junk. First, the antenna is okay. That’s probably the nicest thing on it, other than the wall wart, and the antenna is just a piece of plastic to wrap wire on. There is a switch on the side of the radio to switch Local-Normal-DX. This is a preamp or attenuator of some sort, and local and normal work fine for AM, but DX became a garbled mess once the signal meter started to move. There really isn’t any dynamic range either. This is NOT a trues SSB receiver. The lack of USB/LSB controls gave that one away, and it is a DSB receiver from what I can tell, and there isn’t much filtering in the middle! The Wide setting is ridiculous, and Narrow seems like 8-9kHz or more on each sideband!
	Tuning isn’t fun. The dial is very cheap, and the automatic tuning step control is annoying at best, hindrance at worst. If the knob were bigger and easier to hold they could have ditched it all together. I think 1kHz was the finest the main knob goes, and the BFO knob has finer control for pseudo-SSB and AM. You can switch between “Fast” and “Slow” tuning, but fast is too fast for most uses, and slow is just, yuck.
	FM reception is okay. The tuning control works fine for that. AM reception in all the bands is okay, but again, the preamp switch needs worked back and forth depending on what you are doing, and tuning is very uncomfortable. Also, if you are listening to stations with odd ball frequencies, it takes some work to tune them. Don’t expect to listen to the ham bands with this unless you are very patient. It doesn’t seem to have a loop stick inside for AM/SW, etc. But, I think the whip may be amplified for that.
	Now, this radio does have a few things going for it. It has some memories. I didn’t try them because I had no interest in keeping this thing. You can set a menu option to switch between Ni-Mh batteries and alkaline so that the wall plug will charge them, if using rechargeable batteries, of course. The screen has a backlight, and there is a kick stand to keep the whole thing tilted at an angle for easy viewing. There is also a keypad for frequency entry. 
	But even with those strong points, I can’t recommend this thing. If you want a good HF receiver, then get a good receiver, like an Icom or Kenwood. Even an RTL-SDR did better than this by a long shot.  If you want a portable rig for a BOB or camping, get one of the much cheaper radios with a hand crank and/or solar panel.