Nooelec NESDR Mini 2+ 0.5PPM TCXO RTL-SDR & ADS-B USB Receiver Set w/Antenna, Mount & Female SMA Adapter. RTL2832U & R820T2 Tuner. Low-Cost Software Defined Radio for Windows, Mac OS & Linux

Well built,and solid. Works a charm and mist impressed with ability and what's included making this amazing value for money and extremely educational and practical. Diagnosed a weather sensor fault with this and also an issue with heating thermostat, extremely cool to do that at this price point. Works very well upon a Raspberry Pi and just can't go wrong. Good intro device for SDR and then some. So good that I may buy another and definitely one of their more advanced models they also make.

If this your first time with SDR, this unit ticks all the boxes. Great little receiver. Supplied aerial pretty much useless unless your in a area with lots of radio traffic. Have a look on amazon for an adapter (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003VVPBBS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1) to connect to a balun then homebrew your own aerial (loads of tutorials on youtube. For such a low price, its well worth the money and easily outperforms commercial all in one receivers costing hundreds of pounds.

I can pick up FM broadcasts at high quality with the little antenna supplied. For VHF and UHF, reception improves if I put the antenna onto a steel tray to act as a ground plane. I am getting some sort of signal, but am not convinced that the radio is working properly for those frequency bands. As for HF and trying to receive amateur signals at 14 MHz - zilch. I think some hack is required to get the receiver to tune below 25 MHz. I hear that for HF, whatever other hack you do, you also need to provide a good earth to the antenna. The various SDR software packages work well - it took some getting used to this spectacular way of displaying radio information as they use "waterfalls". These waterfalls display both frequency and time domains for both RF frequencies and Audio frequencies. When tuning to broadcast FM you put the cursor on a splash of colour on the RF spectrum, and presto you hear the broadcast. On the Audio spectrum waterfall you see both the sound channel and the 19 kHz pilot tone which carries the stereo sound information (if stereo is being transmitted you see a colour spladh around 19kHz, othrrwise if mono is being transmitted you see just a crimson line at 19 kHz.). I am still getting familiar with the controls. The Tekevision remote control does nothing, and tjis has been added to my junk box for use elsewhere than with the Nooelec. YouTube vids on the subject give useful guidance.

For the price. A bargain. It May not be as good as a more expensive higher end product. But for £21 this is brilliant. Only draw back is software that it will work with on Windows xp. I down loaded the recommended software from the site. Works well and has many features. At the moment it's plugged into a temporary 2m band antenna. 100 feet of cheap coax run. But. It has been very good picking up ham transmissions on 2m. Also 70 cm. Marine band on 156mhz . Air band etc. My main reason for getting this was to receive APT weather satellites on 137mhz. The adjustable bandwidth makes this perfect. I have had the best images I've ever had even though it's not the correct antenna. I have found this usefull for checking for harmonics. The only fault i have found is i pick up radio broadcast stations when turned to 28mhz. This could possibly be down to a fault my end . Also note ty'at this uses a lot of processor power. My laptop 1.6ghz struggled to run it. But perfect on 3.2ghz base unit. Runs about 43% processor. Overall im very pleased with this dongle.

Ok let's get the rough out of the way. ...I ordered two of these intending to listen to London Bus trunking among other things. First...the aerials are useless. I dimantled the whips and used them to make a small adjustable dipole and then used my own aerial. These would have been good with a better aerial connection too ...poss mcx. Having said that, for the money they are amazing value. I own an aor dv1 scanner ...it cost 1400 quid and in all honesty dosent do any more than these apart from looking the part. These use sdrsharp as the radio and it is excellent and well supported on google and youtube. It is a free download. I have used DSDplus, an add on for sdr sharp to listen to encoded london based pmr between 160 and 170mhz. Its amazingly addictive. I have listened to buses, taxis had a go at aeroplane data decoding and aircraft chatter. It decodes radio pager traffic with simple free software and satellite data. Rail companies and other land based dmr on uhf at about 400 to 460 mhz. If it isn't encrypted this thing can likely hear it. If you have a bnc plug aerial you must get a MCX to BNC adaptor to clip onto the little gold adaptor they supply with the unit or you're stuck with the pitiful aerial. The kids wont thank you for that. All in all a great buy though. Highly recommended for those not afraid of tinkering.

The only thing I could receive on it was some local FM radio stations but not all of them. Meanwhile my portable FM radio had no trouble tuning them in so I tried using a longer antenna rather than supplied whip antenna and again I couldn't receive anything on LW, MW or the entire HF band from 3Mhz to 30Mhz - Nothing but a couple of local FM stations. Audio was slightly distorted and the overall sensitivity of the unit was poor at best. Tried two different software downloads including the one recommended by Nooelec. Either this thing is garbage or just mine. Completely disappointed after looking forward to trying SDR. There's was no documentation included with the unit which was packaged in a Ziploc bag and the remote control does absolutely nothing. In my opinion, Don't waste your money on this. this is a copy of another review but it says everthing i was thinking about this bin fodder

I have no idea after 4 hours trying to install drivers and make it work I gave up. Warning. 100% this is NOT plug and play. Don’t think you just install software, find the dll and instal, that is NOT the case. This is a total pain to install. If you are only a computer user or hobbiest give up !! This thing is hell !!’

I use this with CubicSDR in a MacBook Pro. When first powered up it drifts significantly until it's warmed up - and does it get warm! I have been able to listen to Amateur stations on many bands and it's good value for money, but let it warm up for a good ten minutes before trying to use it. As others have said, the supplied antenna is junk but with a suitable adaptor it can be used with a proper antenna just fine.