Thoughts on the IC-7610

I had the opportunity recently to visit a Ham Radio Outlet store and spend a couple hours with the 7610. With the cost now $1,000 lower (after promos) than the introductory price I thought there was a good chance I’d take one home. But it wasn’t long before I came to realize that didn’t meet my expectations.

I own an IC-7600 and IC-7300, and from the Icom marketing material I expected the IC-7610 to be an upgraded replacement to my IC-7600.  But I left Ham Radio Outlet empty handed and feeling the IC-7610 should have been named the IC-7350 as it appears to be more of a big brother to the SDR IC-7300 than a replacement for the IC-7600.

The IC-7600 is a solid professional feeling rig with a weighted tuning wheel and firm controls.  The IC-7610 felt like an inexpensive mass produced consumer radio.  The IC-7600 has a myriad of controls and settings in the software – which is easily scrolled up and down to find the right setting. Probably due to the touch screen, the IC-7610 only displays a few items on screen at a time, leaving it confusing to page up and down to find the desired setting.  And the menus are hidden behind a long press of different keys.  Two hours of playing and I never found the color parameters for the spectrum display (although I know they’re there).

Yes, the IC-7610 has a larger screen, video display output, true dual receivers on any band, more antenna connections (including receive antenna) and a much faster true FFT spectrum display (but don’t bother setting it to “Fast” unless you want an elliptic seizure). But after spending a couple hours with it I knew I wouldn’t want to give up my IC-7600, which was the whole purpose of looking at the IC-7610.  And I’m a little bit nervous about the reports of burn-in on the display screen. I believe that this was supposed to be relegated to just the initial units and that they now have a different vendor.  However a few people have reported the issue has reappeared even after the screen was replaced – although I haven’t been able to verify that.

So the year or so of anticipation waiting for the release of the IC-7610 and subsequent thoughts of purchase were greatly diminished by spending some time with it.  I’m just grateful I didn’t order one without trying it first as I did with my IC-7600.  So maybe I’ll add an IC-9700 to my shack instead. It’s probably no different than a VHF/UHF version of my IC-7300, but at least my expectation are set properly this time.