It may be too late for me to comment about Sangean's ATS-909X, considering how old this thread is, yet it's also a bit too earlier to contribute an accurate assessment, as I acquired the radio brand-new only one week ago. Nevertheless, my impressions so far are very good.
Without the technical knowledge or equipment to measure the radio's sensitivity and other performance factors, I have to rely only on a comparison with my other two radios, the ICOM R75 and the Sony ICF-2002 (also sold as the 7600D). The ICOM, even though it has triple conversion and two switchable RF preamps, does not pull in signals any stronger or clearer than the Sangean. In fact, the Sangean produces far less noise, even with its included AC adapter in use. The ICOM is running on a very clean regulated power supply, yet the receiver adds quite a bit of its own circuit noise. The Sony is quieter, but the signals are no stronger. Note here that I can't have an outside antenna, so I'm using a random wire antenna indoors on the third (top) floor of a wood-frame apartment building. The Sangean's telescoping whip antenna is sturdy and quite long. It is sometimes sufficient if I listen while sitting outside on the balcony, but I'm in Canada, and winters are long here.
I listen exclusively through headphones. The Sony's audio is pleasant, but far too bassy for listening to weak signals from shortwave broadcasters in AM mode. The ICOM is the opposite: It has the rather harsh audio of a communications receiver (which indeed it is), but this makes prolonged listening pretty unpleasant. The Sangean's audio, on the other hand, manages to be both more pleasant and more readable than either of the other two.
The ICOM has more IF filters, twin passband tuning, etc., plus a nice, smooth tuning dial. These things are especially helpful on SSB. Unfortunately, the radio has developed some key bounce over the years (I bought it in 1998), so that pressing a key sometimes results in two or three operations instead of a single one. I haven't encountered this on the Sangean so far.
Where the little Sony seems to shine is in its longevity: I've had the thing since 1985, and aside from a little scratchiness in the controls, it's still like new. Unlike the other two radios, however, it has only one tuning step on shortwave, 5 kHz, so that in tuning sideband stations it's necessary to use the fine tuning control. This is a tiny thumbwheel, which is not very stable mechanically and often has to be readjusted to correct the voice pitch. One tunes downward on USB and upward on LSB, as the specific sideband cannot be selected. The Sangean does offer that capability, however, and its tuning dial is OK, even with the detents. Some other people have found them annoying due to the lack of smoothness. However, the detents do prevent accidental detuning, which is an added benefit.
I love the appearance of the Sangean, the tilt-out stand, and also the nice big LCD display.
The memories are stored in separate "pages". With only 9 memories to a page, this seemed awkward at first, but I've already gotten used to it, and have been storing the frequencies in pages I name by categories, for example international broadcasting, aeronautical, ham, time signals, etc. (abbreviated, of course). 39 pages are available for shortwave, which comes out to 351 memories; more than I'll ever be able to use. The remaining 51 are shared by the FM, MW and LW bands. Quite a few memories were pre-programmed by Sangean, but I cleared them all, since the frequencies are either outdated or the stations are unavailable at my location. By comparison, the Sony has only 10 memories, and the ICOM has 99 plus 2 reserved for scanning range limits.
Obviously I've been comparing apples and oranges here -- but so far there are no lemons.
I just hope the Sangean ATS-909X lasts me as long as my other two receivers. It's the black model, and I've read the warnings, but I have my fingers crossed. Did you ever notice how hard it is to tune a radio with your fingers crossed? Or type a post this long on a forum, for that matter?
