What's the best sortwave radio out there now that you can listen to utility*stations, ssb, ham and all shortwave band also with external antenna jack, wide & narrow switch and great reception in portables and desktops?
I prefer portable radio with the list above
Price range $50 to $200
Your goal is slightly schizophrenic. “Whats the best”, “great reception”, and “$50 to $200”. That is kind of a hard pull, or at least relative. You can have “best in this price range”, but not “best” or “great” with that price range.
Your desired targets are also ambitious for a portable, particularly utility and ham can be a problem with portables. Both of these classes of stations tend to be unscheduled and lower power, requiring at least fair to good performance to make the listening experience enjoyable, vs a lesson in frustration.
There are no new desktops you can buy in that price range. A few used desktop rigs can be found that fit the price range and are decent performers.
There are many portables that will be found new in that price range, a couple of them quite good, none of them qualify as the best shortwave radio out there or “great”. Probably the best one (current production) under $200 I have tried is the Tecsun PL660, I also like the PL880 with the 8820 or later firmware, but both of these radios have been known to have quality control issues. However for just over this $200 top end you can get the Sangean ATS-909X, and I think it is a much better radio than the Tecsuns.
In my opinion if you really want to do utilities, other than the aviation standbys that are always present to some extent, nothing beats an SDR. The waterfall displays help you notice those short duration, unpublished frequency, transmissions that can so often be the most interesting. There are a few different SDRs that can be found in your price range, but none of them are really all that great. At about the same price as the Sangean ATS-909X (~$250) you can get the AFEDRI SDR, a pretty decent performer.
So weight your goals a little better. By that I mean, what are the most important factors for you (performance vs cost, portability vs performance, battery power vs fixed power, etc)? What is the order of importance of the services you intend to listen to? If you do those things you can probably narrow down the options to one or two best fits.
T!