I received a note today from Elecevolve, the manufacturer of the MLite-880, offering a review unit. Nearly all the radios I review are ones I purchase outright, but this will be one of those rare exceptions.
The MLite-880 was not on my buy list for a couple of reasons. I was little put off by its appearance and particularly the black and white screen, where color is the norm for SDRs. I had decided that if I were going to pursue something from the portable SDR genre, then I wouldn’t compromise; I’d get a top-of-the line Mahahit DSP4 when they become available (rather than the discontinued DSP2, DSP3, whatever Deepelec may come up with next, or a clone).
The portable SDR market, from where I sit, seems a mess. First there are clones that take shortcuts, units that can’t get firmware updates, and devices with big overload problems. Prices vary all over the map. I bought a bottom-of-the-pile “DSP digital radio SDR V6” clone with all those problems (SDR V6 – The Good, the Bad and the Review); I mostly ignore it.
The MLite-880 avoids some of those issues. It’s not a clone, and indeed there are purchase links to it on the Malahiteam website itself, and it has a price (4/7/2026) of $180 plus shipping, which at first blush seems reasonable. Firmware updates are advertised, with V2.2 the latest.
Independent Review
Reviewing free stuff is tricky. It’s easy to say that the review is independent and unbiased. I’ll only say true stuff, but when someone provides a product, I think that entitles them more attention to detail. I’m making fewer videos these days, but the MLite-880 will probably get more video.
Certainly when I get the Malahit DSP4, there will be some serious comparisons between it, the MLite-880 and my SDR V6 clone.
It should be fun.
While you’re waiting, there are some YouTube videos on the MLite-880 on the OfficialSWLChannel, and there is a manual!
Highlights
The full feature list is long. Frequencies covered are LW starting at 100 kHz, all the international FM broadcast ranges, MW and SW topping at 30 MHz. There is also VHF from 118 MHz-148 MHz including AIR band. It demodulates SSB, SSB, CW, NFM, WFM and AM. It has synchronous tuning. FM RDS is included. One promising feature, standard fare for an SDR, is digital noise reduction. It uses a 21700 battery (same as a Tesla).
The radio has a MicroSD card slot and can record to the card. It also has a feature that I do not ever recall encountering in a radio before: Bluetooth output for a speaker or headphones.
There are two nice things about antennas. First, it has a built in telescopic antenna that’s a boon for portable operation. The second is the capability to power an external antenna such as the MLA-30+ without having to carry around a separate Biasing T and power supply.
I note that there is a frequency calibration feature, and if it is constant across entire shortwave band, it would be a big boost for SSB reception.
The Manual
The 880 is scheduled for delivery tomorrow, so I thought I would familiarize myself with the manual in advance, be ready to hit the ground running. The manual is quite recent, Version 2.2 dated March 26, 2026.
My main complaint with the manual is that it is a PDF file that for the most part cannot be searched. Some text in the figures is searchable with some PDF readers (the one built into Google Chrome works, but not Adobe Acrobat, Edge or Foxit PDF Reader), but the main text is not. That is a major inconvenience, especially with no index or table of contents.
At first glance, the manual didn’t look too bad. It did have some problems with unusual terminology:
The typography is sloppy with spaces missing between things. It calls decimal point “small point.” I have no idea what they mean by “display spectra in line or color form”; it’s only black and white.
The second time through, I started noticing misspelled words in the text, and abbreviations (like SQL, and NR) that are never spelled out.
The section on RDS (Radio Data System) just informs the user that it can be turned on or off with a format “PI: XXXX”. Is that all there is, just the 4-digit hexadecimal program identifier? If so, that would be the least information of any RDS-enabled radio that I’ve ever seen.1 I didn’t see anything about setting the clock from RDS.
At this point, it appears that the manual is usable, but cheaply designed. I give it a “C” grade. By comparison, the marketing material is top notch, explaining things in more detail than the manual.2
Questions:
- Does the clock run when the radio is off? It is set from RDS?
- Does “Full-band radio recording” mean complex baseband IQ samples?
Update: Projected delivery April 22.