Quite honestly, I use both Degen DE1103 and Sony SW7600GR. Well satisfied with the performance of both but the later one costs triple or more than the first one. 1103 is really a fun to tune in to. Go through eHam.net for some nice reviews on them.
For shortwave receivers, performance in order of importance is:
1) dynamic range - without good large signal handling performance you end up with an intermod spagetti bundle.
2) dynamic range
3) selectivity - assuming you havn't lost it with intermod you then have to pick out signal you want against potential large signals on nearby freqs.
4) sensitivity - not that important due to abundance of large signals and atmospheric noise that raise the noise floor on the receiver. Anything better then 8db to 10 db noise figure won't give you performance improvement, and likely be sacrificing dynamic range to get improved noise figure.
Quite honestly, I use both Degen DE1103 and Sony SW7600GR. Well satisfied with the performance of both but the later one costs triple or more than the first one. 1103 is really a fun to tune in to. Go through eHam.net for some nice reviews on them.
That's right Nigel, Sony thing is quite old though it's still on good production and demand. Both the models are quite good at SW/MW/FM reception except ham bands. Also I've taken MrAl's post as a newcomer into SWL
Anyway those professional one's are quite better on ham bands yes, much costlier too.