[newhouseb]

Hands down the PlutoSDR (a.k.a ADALM-PLUTO) has the best price/performance & support I've seen (and I've owned a BladeRF, LimeSDR and various RTL dongles as well).

The core radio chip itself (the AD9363) appears to be identical and/or a binned version of the AD9364 chip used in things like USRP Radios (i.e. the high-end standard bearer brand for SDR) and can be configurated to behave like it [1]. The unit price for the AD9364 chip (in low volumes) is around $200. The ENTIRE PlutoSDR is $150 and that includes a Zynq-7010 FPGA (which itself is not cheap)!

Because it's built by Analog Devices, it's generally well supported. It's designed as an educational tool so there are a lot of tutorials for beginners like PySDR. I really like the interfacing libraries (pyadi) that allow me to easily configure the SDR from a python notebook and pull an RX buffer into numpy and process away.

[1] https://wiki.analog.com/university/tools/pluto/users/customi... [2] https://pysdr.org/index.html

[ac29]

Your link says only early builds had the AD9364, and production builds have the AD9363. Too bad, its certainly less useful with no ability for VHF. You aren't going to get much range out of UHF with a 5mW output limit.

[newhouseb]

If you look at other sources, you'll see that the 9363 can be coaxed into being a (usually up to spec) 9374: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/adalm-pluto-sdr-hack-tune-70-mhz-to-...

[aftbit]

$250 from Analog directly, $200 from Amazon right now. Where can I find it for $150?

[roamingryan]

Most of the major component distributors: https://www.findchips.com/search/Adalm-pluto