ATU-100 Antenna Tuner from Bangood is really BAD! 

Great review. I'd looked at these and wondered about them. They also sell kits on eBay so you can build it yourself and ensure it's done properly

Excellent . Thanks for posting . I’ll definitely take a look inside the box before using mine . The sense I get is that several manufacturers are making these and some are doing a great job and some are doing a terrible job.

Thanks for the informative video, you may have just saved me money. Did you get a chance to try it on QRP (5W)? I am looking for something portable and battery powered, but my searches have come up blank so far. Would appreciate any recommendations. 73

Hams generally cause the confusion regrading “tuners” by calling them “tuners”. Technically, they aren’t even matching units unless placed at the feed point. In the military we referred to them as “antenna couplers”. Which is much more accurate when describing its function.

Perfect timing. I was just looking at one. I just got a HF/6 mobile and haven't made my mind up yet on antenna's Good food for thought on my end thankz 73

A little note about your explanation on impedance mismatches: unfortunately the formula for SWR is a bit more complex. I did some algebra and figured out that what you demonstrated only is true for impedances above 50 ohms. If you look into the formula, a 3:1 SWR can either be 150 or 16.67 ohms and 10:1 can be 500 or 5 ohms. Regardless, it made me discover a neat peculiarity with the formula

Man, I had I hopes for these units. If I have to take one apart after purchase to make sure it was assembled properly I might as well buy the kit and build it myself. Great video, thanks for taking a look at these units.

I seem to have a problem with mine, every time I transmit the LED screen goes crazy is the RFi going back in to the ATU 100 and I need a choke not sure any help be good thanks 2E1FUE. It works but 40m goes crazy on TX the LED screen goes off and scrambled.

I never buy this type of product unless it's available as a kit, as they construction flaws you've pointed out are all too common. (Common with MFJ gear too, if we're honest.) But I built one of these tuners from a kit...100w, no battery and with the Tune & Bypass buttons. It works GREAT, far better than I could have hoped. It's kind of a tricky build because there is no real documentation provided and there are so many versions out there in the wild that it's difficult to know what information is correct for your build. Still, it fired up first time and has served me well in the field. Mine tunes up just fine with 2-3 watts from my QDX digital transceivers from QRP Labs.

hi can i use a cb swr meter (D135) as a qrp antenna tuner? I have a G5RV ANTENNA full size 80m-10m and a USDR USDX 5W 8-Band SDR Radio Receiver SDR Transceiver FM AM LSB USB CW w/ Mic chinese from ebay. thanks.just setting up for first time, 20 years since passed my ham exam.exciting, but forgot lots.

I soldered it myself as a kit and it works reliably and flawlessly. 73 Bruno

Great teardown Dude, luckily you video’d the tft wiring before you took it off, lol.

Some great info Dude! Hopefully anyone that buys this does like you did and opens it up first.

The best way with this little beastie is to purchase in kit form and build it yourself. The N7DDC kit is quite a simple build not that all the SMC stuff is factory fitted. I've built two of these for myself and both work really well in the home QTH and portable. Sadly not good for QRP as they sensibly need 10w+ to trigger and set a good tune cycle. That being said, there is a way to alter parameters in the firmware with the right software and home brew USB cable. Bangood really is BANG_BAD! The tuner inside IS the N7DDC tuner kit ready made in a 3rd party box. I made two with no issues so cannot be that hard to do hihi. 73 de MM0JNL

Thanks for the video brew. Looking a little slim/thin, you OK? New lens?

Thanks dude! I often thought about purchasing one of these along with an ft891... But I agree with what you said. Probably a great idea and invention without a solid execution. But thanks for the dive! Sounds like if I got one of these I'd need to do some checking before I used it

I bought one about a year ago as my first tuner, and the soldering was good on mine. Not to say everything was okay though, my first hint was that it rattled when I took it out of the box. Not a single screw or nut was actually fastened. Even though it worked pretty well after screwing it together, it had some grounding issues. I sold it after about a month and bought a manual MFJ tuner instead. Typical Chinese quality control on these.

Makes me feel way better about my soldering skills; I just put this kit together myself and managed to not melt any random wires with giant blobs of dripped solder when I did it...

input power can be adjusted UART

Well, that was, how to say, revealing ;-) I had thought about this one and the QRP version and always went back to my experience: three different auto ATUs from three different companies, all of 'em what I'd call front line and reputable. But each of 'em had their problems and one of 'em just outright died. In the middle of a beachside operation. Left me off the air for the rest of the trip. (At which point I went home, hauled out the tools and parts and made not one but six different Z-match style ATUs. Sold three of 'em. Kept the rest. And each one of 'em has performed marvelously. Yeah, I have to twist knobs and all that, but I get full 80m through 6m coverage out of them. And then I built a 1kW version with remote motor tuning and all that. Best damn tuners I have ever used. So . . . no more auto ATUs for me and no more pi-LC whatever tuners either.) . . . Thanks for the great inside views and the good, honest review. Stay safe & sane! 73 de W8IJN

This is a type of project that is better to build your own rather than get it from someone that you don't know how it was put together. I purchased the kit to build it for about $25 on the other Chinese marketplace. I been using it in all my POTA activations with 100W without any issues. This is the kind of things your mileage may vary, like they say :) 73

I purchased a different, but similar model from AliExpress and have been really impressed with it. It handles a 10:1 mismatch well, and has adjustable input power to make it work down to QRP power levels. But any of these items from the big Chinese distributors are a bit of a crap shoot from a quality perspective. 😬

I'm a little surprised with Bangood. Especially if they are actually selling this product. But, this is what I have seen in the past. Someone designs a fairly good product, its copying designs by others (MFJ) and possibly even takes it to Bangood. Bangood has people inside who evaluate these products. Bangood says "sure, we will buy 1000" and the designer then says "OK, I'll have 1000 built". Now is when the problems start. The designer submits it to a manufacturer. The Manufacturers (Possibly sort of a bidding process) say sure , we will build 1000 for (a low bid ) $s. The designer takes the low bid. The manufacturer probably hasn't see this type of unit before, has to source all the parts (low bid process again) , gets some not so god labor and throws them together, and submits them to Bangood..by then Bangood thinks its getting a decent product and trys to sell some of them. You enter here, because they get a few complaints. So, process has many faults, on the manufacturer side, poor help, and even thinking they can leave parts out that were in the original design. Very poor parts. The designer is left sometimes holding the bag. Some of these "designers" are from the U.S. and fly over to go through this process ! Incidentally,, they used the exact same type of toroid, the red mix, in the intellituner series. Not sure , probably a little smaller. The MFJ Intellituner is good for 300 watts, this tuner, 50 to 100 ?

This thing is a head scratcher for sure. Digging the vid format too

Thats crazy. Looks like I'll buy the build it your self kit

Thanks Dude! Your dog is awesome!

Nice job with the video HRD. If they cut so many corners on the construction it makes you wonder about the quality of the components 🤔

Looks like a tuner from radio ham from USSR Lipetsk, written in Radio magazine from 2010. The same scheme.

Great video dude, thank you for the teardown. It's a shame it's so poorly made. I'll wait for a better tuner, that's for sure. I dig the disassembly mat it looks really nice.

That so-239 is internally broken.

Good video. What a shame. It really looked like a neat little ATU. I guess I'll have to wait for Elecraft to start selling the T1 ATU again. Barry, KU3X

Thanks for the video, sounded it the kit version is any better, at least the craftsmanship might be better.🤔

The blind leading the doods.

I'm supposed to have one delivered tomorrow. Wish me luck. But I just want to switch from 10 to 11 meters.

Good insight.

Ah that sucks! My ATU-100 from AliExpress (not Bangood) works extremely well and the build quality was top notch, possibly better built than I could have done myself honestly it was super slick inside.

Because we had antenna tuners there and only for the shelf it is no longer suitable, the values ​​can be adjusted with an antenna analyzer and are totally different and therefore dangerous for the amplifier!

It's funny is it the I've got this item and I use on my Yaesu FT 840 and it is perfect it, works perfectly it does exactly what it says.. Maybe if you stop thinking of it as a budget item instead of a useful item, maybe you would like it...

Nice

Nice job, Dude! Frightening quality control, wherever they were made. Frightening = Non-existent Like you, I don't fault the inventor at all. Whoever was commissioned to put them together, though... 😬 Keep up the good work, Dude. 👍🏻

Need to check those cold solider joints and fix it. 😵‍💫

From China I only buy kits. Then I do the assembly myself. China is pretty good at gathering all of the parts at a good price. I'm pretty good at construction/mods/swapping in better parts where it counts, then testing, etc. In this case, I bought the kit, saved a lot of money, built it up using silver mica caps for reactance stepping, (because they stay thermally stable after the autotune so the SWR stays low as the caps warm up,) and I tossed out the junk SO-239 sockets and installed good ones with Teflon dielectric. With junk parts, whatever happened once, will happen again. The difference between licensed hams and unlicensed CBers is that hams, even tech class hams have a government license to pop the lids and see what's inside, or design, build, and operate our own transmitters pushing one and a half kilowatts. The FCC makes 'us' responsible for running good gear well. We are no longer 'consumers' who can blame anything on the vendors or the boxes they sell us, nothing. It's all on us. We can't play dumb. Far too many new hams, and even some who have had a license for a while have yet to figure that part out. I think perhaps the hobby would really be better off if every perspective ham had an Elmer who had to sign off on them getting a license. It would help ensure that new hams understood the responsibilities that come with the license.

The review itself was good but because of the delivered product kinda painfull to watch. Wow. I am not calling myself the best solderer but this is worse than just bad... Thanks for reviewing it though!

The qrp tuner that has a battery is rated for 40 watts. They mark the cases the same on different models. The real 100 watt version has no battery and takes more watts to tune.

Unless you have it powered up all the relays are in their open position and you shouldn't have any continuity between The SOS239 center and ground.dot.if you do something shorted

Can you put some stills of the item that you are describing? Instead of moving it around in your hands. Otherwise a great video.

Subscribed :)

Mine popped in a week running 13 watts pep.

7:15 google translator with a camera could give the clue what those markings mean

Maybe it's just me But it looks like quality is a bit lacking. Thanks for the info. :)

MFJ is the same..had a very poorly solder joint on my tuner and had to solder before I could use...I took picture of it and sent it to them..

Nice review, but!! Measuring continuity with your universal meter is not the way you should. DC continuity is not the same as RF continuity.... You as a HAM should know. ;) Cause of measuring the DC continuity is because of the SWR-bridge used. Check schematics.... 73', PE1PQX - André

Nice kit just some bad Soccer lol joints. And again three days of hell for me. I know You will understand KQ4CD Paul ⚓️

Ask TO. I believe he wrote the wire order down.

Still usable lol.

Thanks. I guess I'll skip on this tuner.

Capisco che la gente non lo sa assemblare : io ho costruito un kit , qualche anno fa e funziona molto bene . io ho una mezz'onda 80 to 6 m ed accorda pure le Warc . Il fatto che è stato costruito male non significa che non è buono . '73 de Francesco as ik0rks

they are great just buy kit instead

$100 tuner. What'd you expect. Decent enough to toss in your go-to bag. Would NOT hang on the QTH rig. If it works, what's the issue? Great vid HRD... Appreciate your review/breakdown ..

would you just plug something in that cheep without going over every inch of it . once you gone over it . they work period .

This is a bit steep....Saying IT is BAD....There are litterally 100's of versions of this . some real "high end" construction and finishing with GOOD components...To say this based on a single (or at the most a few) machine makes no sense.

Honest review but please dump the backward skater hat.

Got my ATU 100EXT last Monday and it stopped working Sunday. Shows a SWR of 8.00 all the time and 75w. JUNK Sky

Wow, thanks for putting this out there. Im guessing the 5 year old who assembled and soldered it will be get sacked now :/

En China ya no prevalece sólo los bajos precios si no las chapuzas y el desconocimiento del que monta el equipo, tengo uno de esos lo pedí por kits y lo monté y de verdad que viendo las chapuzas esas desde hace muchísimo tiempo, me acojonaria enchufarlo al equipo tal como viene montado, aconsejo que lo compren por kits y lo monten

It's noisey

To be fair it's still better made than an MFJ

Not ready for prime time.

Just put it in the trash and buy a real tuner 🙂

So these are for 160-6 meters? I just built one and don't have those bands :) It is well built if someone wants an assembled kit without a case. Will sell for $30 including shipping in the contiguous 48. This one has SMA connectors instead of SO239. The large push button, power switch, and DC in jack are included. i.imgur.com/2w88Hm8.jpg