TX-500 vs. IC-705

The Lab599 TX-500 portable transceiver is well and truly out of the stables, with a recent short review by OH8STN giving a link to a Swedish supplier, listing the unit at 890 Euro - a good price against Icom's £1299.99 for the IC-705.  The Lab599 site only shows one other outlet, based in the US, anywhere on the planet so far.

This price differential sets up a battle for supremacy between the two transceivers, where any weakness in one will tip the balance in favour of the other.  

The Icom 705, of course, carries a big, trusted name with a reputation of making quality transceivers that are already widely used.  The IC-7300, for example, which the IC-705 bears more than a passing resemblance to, quickly became one of the 'standard' rigs for the ham population these days.  ICOM also have a substantial marketing budget, whereas Lab599 seem unlikely to have much at all.

The IC-705 from Icom.  An established company with a long product line-up and industry-leading product support.

Lab599's offering comes from what I think is a new name in transceiver production, but their TX-500 appears to be a fantastic entry into the market.

An immediate concern that I have with Lab599 is the apparent lack of transparency.  If you consult their web site, glossy as it is, there is no obvious information on where the company is based, and no mail or telephone number.  You have to dig into the user manual download (see below) to find this information.

I've tried the only contact detail - an email address - to try and acquire a review model, but there has been no reply.  An identical request to ICOM UK saw a polite confirmation of being on the review list within 24 hours. Lost in the detail of the Lab599 site is an 'LLC' suffix (I also found an 'Inc' suffix), to their company name, which superficially indicates that at least the trading arm of this company is US-based, but a search on the National Corporation Directory, which is NOT definitive evidence, yielded no results for 'Lab599' or 'Laboratory 599'.  But early video reviews of the TX-500 seemed to place the maker in Russia. 

A bit more hunting on their 'downloads' page revealed, on their user guide for the rig, that they are indeed located in Rubtsovsk, in Siberian Russia.  More than one video is from R9JC.  My not-so-distant paternal family come from Russia, so I have no bias against that country.  But it will, inevitably, be a consideration for some, given this is a new maker, first registered on Youtube only a year ago.

Screengrab from the bottom of the TX-500 user guide (accessed 01/09/2020, 09:03UT).

Lab599's TX-500 Discovery.  A less well-known company, offering what appears to be a very well-engineered, clean product, albeit with unusual connectors.

OK, in the UK at least, consumer law dictates that, if you buy your TX-500 from a ham radio outlet, then it is they, not the manufacturer, who must process the handling of any failure of the equipment (and you should never accept any company telling you, as happens far too often in UK shops in general, otherwise).  So this apparent reluctance to make obvious the Lab599 company information should not be a problem to the consumer.  But it remains to be seen what happens if the TX-500 should, for example, have a basic fault that requires a lot of product returns.  

Lack of ability to contact Icom, however, will never be an issue, at least for UK consumers.  As reported last year, even when I wanted help with a fairly old transceiver I had bought from E-bay, ICOM UK were still very happy to help me with a real engineer calling me on a real telephone.  

I like the TX-500, and reviews from trusted people like OH8STN and SWLing.com seem to back up the impression that it's a rig worth considering.  I don't see the lack of complex features as being of any problem, not least because I never use any such features in my own operations.  Neither it nor the IC-705 has an internal matching unit ('ATU'), but again, I never use one anyway, though I accept they can be useful when the environment slightly detunes a wire antenna.

The IC-705 seems to have an advantage over the TX-500 in using the more usual and established range of connectors to the outside world.  Whilst wiring things up seems simple enough, you will need an external sound card and either make the cable yourself, or wait for someone like Technofix to come up with one.

At the moment, I'm undecided.  I am not an early adopter, preferring those to whom money comes easily to try products out and find their faults, if any.  If I knew the TX-500 was tried and tested, and the company was more willing to give an account of itself online, then at 890 Euro, I would lean towards it and its clean, simple, functional layout, with at least a degree of weather proofness. 

Keeping your head down in Russia is a cultural thing, coming from the Soviet era.  But it doesn't play well in the West, where we expect to know something about the company, and the people behind it.  If, as it might appear, Lab599 is a small, maybe even one-man startup company, then it has, from what I've seen so far, absolutely every reason to shout from the rooftops about itself.  It would be a lot better for us to have the full backstory of the company than either trying to say as little as possible, or give the impression of being a larger company than perhaps it is.  After all, Russia's economy was, in the past, measured on how much raw material it used in manufacturing, which was always absurd, but did at least lead to extremely robust products.  I think we all want to - and would - support someone trying to make a name for themselves, especially from somewhere that isn't the US or Japan.

So the question, for me at least, is whether the ICOM IC-705 is worth an additional £400.  If Lab599 prove to be, over the next few months, a company that wants to sell products without telling the radio community much about themselves, then that would definitely steer me away from them.  ICOM have local offices and engineers that speak to you directly to help out.  At the moment, there is absolutely no indication that Lab599 have anything like this degree of accessibility, and my single attempt to contact them, when they are trying to promote their new product, yielded no answer.  So, for now, the product of choice for me is the IC-705.  

Then again, this low power field operations area of amateur radio is really hotting up, and will only become more competitive with time.  There are alternatives like the Xiegu X5105 to consider.  I'd happily buy one of those today if - and only if - the frequency stability is of the high standard required - and anyway should not these days fail to be - for WSPR and other digital modes.  At the moment, I only have the manufacturer's word for it that the stability is "1Hz or less".  No real user has yet responded to a online forum call for details of their experience with frequency stability.  I should also point out that I've yet to see any real-world stability data for either the IC-705 or TX-500.

Disclaimer: I have no link, except as an owner of a second-hand IC-746, with ICOM, and cannot even establish a link with, never mind actually have any preference for, Lab599.  I have no link at all with Xiegu. I have not been promoted (or dissuaded) by any company to write anything about their products.