A few of you have sent me a tip about an exceptional Black Friday Week price for the Xiegu G106:
$199 shipped via Amazon.com (yes, that’s a QRPer affiliate link).
The timing is ironic for me since just three days ago, I performed a POTA activation with the G106 at Lake James State Park. I’ll hopefully have that field report posted within a week—possibly by Friday, if I can carve out the time.
Long story short: I purchased this G106 via Radioddity in late September, before Hurricane Helene hit WNC. I bought it because I’ve received so many questions about this radio over the past few months—no doubt because it’s the most affordable 80-10 meter multimode (CW, SSB, AM, and FM) radio on the market.
I posted a thorough review of the Xiegu G106 last summer, and I stand by that review. This radio isn’t for everyone—it’s super basic—but its performance is decent.
While using it Wednesday, I noticed a bit of AGC surge when a strong signal was present; the AGC takes a second to handle the incoming CW signal, making it feel slightly sluggish. I don’t recall this being an issue with the loaner unit I reviewed last year, but it’s there now. I’ll reach out to Xiegu to see if a firmware update might address this.
If you’re looking for a super-affordable HF radio that does SSB right out of the box (the QMX should as well, once Hans implements that in firmware), the G106 is a solid option. It’s a capable SSB QRP radio and decent at CW as well—again, especially for the price.
When I purchased my G106 in September, I bought directly through Radioddity’s site, taking advantage of a flash bundle deal that included the G106 and the DE17 digital interface for $239 or $249.
Had this Amazon deal been available, I would’ve jumped on it instead since I hadn’t planned on buying the DE17.
Before purchasing, I recommend reading my full review. This isn’t a “slam dunk” radio, but it’s a capable little machine and a great option to keep tucked away in a vehicle for impromptu activations.
Click here to check it out on Amazon.com.
As a reminder, the link above is an affiliate link. QRPer.com earns a small percentage of the sale at no additional cost to you. If you’d prefer not to use the affiliate link, you can use this one instead.
I really like mine, but I have not used it on an activation yet.
I really enjoy mine. Super simple and easy to use, which is great for sota/pota. If you want something that just works, this is it. I even had a qso the other day where the contact was so impressed by the audio he said he was going to go buy himself a g106.
Always appreciate your reviews. I had one within the last year and after a week or two decided to return it. As noted, it does work, but it just wasn’t fun to use. There were several issues with it that I can’t fully recall at the moment, but I seem to remember low audio and filtering issues. I did make some CW contacts with it and oddly…ha, it would power up with a regular 9v battery – not sure how long it would run on that but it did for a few minutes at least. The form factor was cool but, yeah, just didn’t do it for me.