Which is better the R820T or the are 820t2 tuner?

Over on the hamradioscience blog the author has uploaded a post showing a comparison between the R820T and the R820T2 tuners. Recently Nooelec began selling RTL-SDR dongles with the R820T2 tuner chip in them ( Ebay ). The R820T2 tuner has been anecdotally reported as having slightly better sensitivity (~2-6 dB better).

Which is better the rtl-sdr or the r820t2?

The R820T2 tuner has been anecdotally reported as having slightly better sensitivity (~2-6 dB better). It also works much better with Oliver Jowetts experimental RTL-SDR driver which enables HF reception without any hardware modifications.

Are there any tuners for Realtek RTL2832U E4000?

As of 2021 Rafael Micro has changed the manufacturing path for the R820T tuners and because of this has renamed them R860. The R860 tuners are exactly identical to the R820T2 tuners. Here’s a dump of all the leaked datasheets and research by rtlsdr community members on the E4000 and R820T tuners I have as of 2020.

What are the LNA and mixer settings on the R820T?

R820T also has LNA, mixer and IF gain settings – the exact steps are not known. The numbers in the library code are through measuring the gain at a fixed frequency. That gave 0..33dB for the LNA, 0..16dB for the mixer and -4.7..40.8dB for the IF gain.

Is the Rafael r820t2 chip still in use?

However, Rafael are still producing new quality R820T2 chips for factories if they make very large bulk orders. Since it is one Chinese manufacturer producing all of RTL-SDR.com V3, NooElec, FlightAware and most generically branded dongles, the volume restriction is not a problem for them as long as the RTL-SDR is still in demand.

Do you need USB 2 for the E4000?

For the data transfer mode USB 2 is required, 1.1 won’t work. Antti Palosaari’s measurements show the R820T use ~300mA of 5v USB power while the E4000 devices use only ~170mA. You can cut the leads to the LED to drop usage ~10%.