Ease of navigation through the menu system.Overall excellent SSB performance, both on TX and RX.Outstanding cooling - the dual fan cooling system moves a lot of air.Yaesu's traditional rugged construction - the thing is built like a tank.When I put the FT-891 into play the good things immediately popped out.
I even went so far as to purchase the matching Yaesu FC-50 tuner. On paper the feature set looked great - high resolution display, 32-bit DSP, CAT control via USB, maybe a built-in sound card (some early chatter about the radio hinted at it), band scope, backlit buttons. After all, it held the promise of being able to do just about everything you'd want an HF rig to do. I intended to make the FT-891 the centerpiece HF portion of my new downsized shack. The radio also allowed me to keep my promise to my wife to keep my ham radio 'footprint' small (and that didn't last long, ha, ha). At the time it seemed to be the answer to what I was looking for - a small form factor 100 watt HF radio that offered modern digital signal processing. The FT-891 had been announced at Hamvention in 2016 and hit the shelves soon after.
It was an early production example made in late 2016 and I bought it soon after I got back into ham radio.
