Review of the AUD $40 DAB-PC1 radio from Ali Express

Reviewing a radio receiver is made a little more challenging when there’s no brand name on it. The model number on the back is DAB-PC1, and it uses PC1 as part of its Bluetooth identifier, so I’m guessing that’s its name (and this is probably how you’ll see it listed on Ali Express or similar). I bought it from AliExpress - here’s the product listing.

When I bought this, it was around AUD$35 (under £20), including shipping. It says the normal price is AUD $66.

In the box is a USB-A to USB-C charging cable. The radio charges from USB-C, and has a 1200 mAh battery in it, which the manufacturer says lasts for eight hours in DAB mode.

Also in the box is an instruction manual. No, literally - it’s called “An Instruction Manual”. And here it is.

The radio itself comes half-charged, as most of these things do. It looks to have a decent colour screen; has four clicky buttons on the front and volume controls on the side as well as a headphone jack (which I’ve not tried) and the USB-C input. You can use the radio while it charges: it appears to pull around 600m when it’s on.

It has one, quite small, speaker - but it sounds fine for speech. It weighs almost nothing, at 120g, but it feels robust and well-built. It’s tiny, at 12cm long, 6.5cm high. The screen (which came with a screen-protector) is set back from the unit, which should afford it a little protection. It has a pre-applied DAB+ sticker on it, which is not covering the real speaker grille, and it feels like it’s paper and too much hassle to take off, so I won’t.

The odd thing about the radio is the volume control, which you have to hold down to adjust the volume, which makes it a little fiddly. Touch the volume control, and you get the radio’s settings menu and display modes. Personally, I’d have switched these round, so the click controls the volume, while you hold it down to get settings.

Tuning around

It has a clear screen, which displays SLS, DAB’s slideshow function. In Australia, this once showed now-playing information, but is now very low-bitrate and so mostly shows station logos (triplej has now-playing info). The graphic can take more than a minute to display; but it’s a useful thing, especially for radio station name recall.

SLS is normally broadcast at 320x240 pixels, but the main display shows it as square (thus stretching the graphics a little). Click the “OH” button to show the graphic full-screen, at the native resolution, given the screen itself is also 320x240.

The display also shows LiveText, the additional text information. If it’s too long to fit, tough, it just cuts it off.

The tuning is as simple as hitting the up/down buttons and scrolling through a simple alphabetical list. The radio does an auto-tune when you first get it out of the box.

I can’t test how sensitive the unit is, since I live less than a mile from the main transmitter. But it doesn’t make the annoying boiling mud noise (I think all DAB+ transmissions just fade away when the signal gets poor).

Touch the power button to switch mode, and you can get into FM reception mode. When I tried it for the first time, there was an awful clicking noise, which I suspected was the screen interfering with the FM reception; however, trying it again in the RF-busy office, it sounds just fine. It seems quite deaf. It decodes the RDS name and the Radiotext (seen here on 4ZZZ’s 102.1 signal).

There is also a bluetooth mode. The unit identifies as QM_BP_PC1. It doesn’t show any information other than “playing” - no track info at all.

The menu suggests this is system version R-202105172144.

Turning it off (holding down the power button) takes you to an alarm clock view, then holding the power button again turns it off properly. (Fun fact - while working for a client, I learnt that the presence of an alarm clock means you have less import tax to pay in some countries, keeping the price lower.)

Bugs, it’s got a few, but then again, too few to mention

The software has some bugs, but not show-stoppers.

In Bluetooth mode, it didn’t properly decode the name of my iPhone. My iPhone is apparently called “JamesÆáüs iPhone 17”. I think there’s a badly decoded apostrophe there.

In DAB mode, it says, under the information screen, that all stations are encoded in mono. (They’re not).

Inside

Three screws at the top, and another three at the bottom, lets you open it up. Inside, a circuit-board claiming its name is DAB_QM_PC1-TYPE-C and a revision date of 11 October 2024.

There’s definitely a 1200mAh spicy pillow battery inside it, and I’m not sure what the splodge of gold with the soldered wire is for, next to the antenna. Thinking about it, I think it’s an ingenious RF shield for the DAB module, which it would cover when the radio is assembled.

The DAB module inside uses the FC8080Q chipset from FCI; the module is dated June 2011. Also inside, a BP1048B2 audio chip, which does the Bluetooth mode but which also seems to decode the audio; and a CST8102A amplifier chip for the audio.

Overall

This is a decent little DAB+ radio, good for you if you’re travelling to a DAB+ country and wanting to listen to a bit of the output. The screen’s display is clear, easy to see, and the colour screen of SLS, where broadcast, adds a little to the experience.

The volume control behaviour is a little annoying; and I’d not buy this for its FM reception - I have a gloriously geeky radio for that - but for a little portable DAB+ radio, this seems pretty good to me.