Kenwood TS-590S

Carl G4GTW’s review of the new Kenwood TS-590

First impressions
A weighty radio suggests substantial chassis and probably good heat sinking ability.
The main tuning knob has a quality look and feel, with no bearing movement, the rest of the front panel is well laid out and the buttons and controls have a quality feel. I like the crisp large LCD display showing just the right amount of information.
Out of the box
I have had earlier Kenwood models and, in this model, they have retained very similar control to the TS-570 and TS-480, enabling me to be on the air in minutes. The recovered audio from the built in speaker is good but, when I plugged in headphones, the received audio dynamics are superb and will be difficult to beat.
Modest adjustment
Transmit audio with the stock hand mic and no TX equalisation (processor on) received excellent reports once I had set menu 25 and 26 to provide the widest TX band width.
CW performance
Very clean note with minimal key clicks (menu 35 set to 6ms rise time).
Using headphones with semi break in and QSK, a very low level audible click is noticeable on initial key down but, as mentioned, this is very low level. Receive bandwidth adjustment is simple with a bar graph indication of bandwidth setting.
Close in signal handling
My opinion is based on the reception of low level CW stations with strong close in adjacent channel stations. Please bear in mind that this can be very time consuming and I only had a limited time to gain a feel for the performance. The TS-590 was being switched and compared to my fully filtered FT-1000D. My conclusion is that the strong signal handling performance comes close and I am keen to see laboratory figures to see if my observations are far off the mark.
Fan noise
As I guessed, the heat sinking ability of the weighty chassis is good and it takes quite a lot of encouragement for the internal fans to become only slightly audible.
VOX
This was simple to adjust and no issues to report.
Monitor
Provides an accurate assessment of what the transmitted audio quality is like.
Nice touch
You have control from the front panel, two independent and fully adjustable fast and slow AGC time constant settings.
Conclusion
I have really enjoyed the opportunity to have hands on with this radio and I have no doubt it will become an extremely popular radio! Will it replace my FT-1000D; no because I am a keen CW operator and I have come to rely on dual receive for split frequency CW. A TS-590 is on the top of my shopping list as a replacement for my alternative QTH’s radio.