The cabinet of the Grundig Satellit 600 is quite huge with 50,5 x 24,5 x 20,5 cm and it's weight 8,5 kg - one of the most voluminous sets from Grundig. The front panel colour of the Satellit 600 is mostly black, the Satellit 650 came usually with a grey front panel with colour accents from some pushbuttons and controls, there was also a black edition.

On the front panel, the speaker grill is located at the left, in the Satellit 600, separate bass speaker and tweeter are used for optimum audio reproduction.
The frequency dial in the right upper area of the front panel has coarse markings for the frequencies, in fact, it is only the dial of the motor driven preselector ad not a proper frequency dial - the exact reception frequency or the time from the internal clock is displayed on a big character LCD display. Next to the LCD display, You find the signal strength meter, only with 0 - 10 markins as typically found in Grundig shortwave receivers, and the pushbuttons for wavebands and reception mode.
The main tuning knob below is unique for the whole Grundig Satellit series: it is big! The outer of the two concentric controls is used for tuning, it has magnetic stepping and does not tune the set directly but sends signals from an optical encoder to the radio's frequency synthesizer. The inner part will tune the preselector, a bis pushbutton in the middle of the tuning knob permits to switch from manual presepctor tuning to automated tuning, the knob and the pointer of the preselector tuning dial are moved like magic, when You change frequencies, especially when You recall a stored frequency from memory. Automatic preselector tuning is quite reliable, in some conditions, You might tweak the preselector manually a little bit to get that necessary tiny bit of improvement out of the signal to make is readible.

In the bottom row, You find from the left the mains switch, the headphones 6,3 mm standard socket, the switches for the tweeter, dial illumination and nose limiter. Next is the rotary volume control, the separate bass and treble controls, the rotary switch for the three I.F. bandwidths, the AGC/MCG and combined RF gain control, the single sideband switch and the BFO control.

The receiver circuit is based on a microprocessor controlled PLL synthesizer, the frequency can be accessed using direct frequency kepad entry, with the tuning knob with an electronic flywheel effect and from on of the 32 shortwave frequency memories. The preselector variomater can be tunes manually for optimum signal stength, but automatic preselector tuning is much more impressive: the inner part of the tuning knob and the pointer of the preselector tuning dial are motor driven and adjust automatically to the new setting when You change frequency. On long- and mediumwaves, accuracy is sufficient, on shortwaves You can get a better result by tweaking manually for optimum reading on the signal strength meter.
The first mixer brings the incoming RF signal to the first intermediate frequency of 54,5 MHz, thanks to this high I.F. and the preselector, the Satellit 600 is quite immune against mirrors and spurs. After having passe a two step quartz filter, the signal is mixed to the second I.F. of 460 kHz, the the signal has to pass one of the two different I.F. bandwidth filters. In bandwith switch position "superwide" and "wide" the same I.F. filter is in use, an additional audio frequency filter eliminates the 5 kHz hiss from a signal on an adjacent 5 kHz shortwave channel, only in bandwidth switch position narrow, the narrow I.f. filter and additional audio filtering are used. For SSB reception, an auxiliary carrier on 459 or 461 kHz respectively is added. After deodulation, the signal is amplified in a 10 / 15 W final audio stage and acts on the two speaker system.
The Satellit 600 comes with an integrated quartz clock, this will operate a timer circuit and can be used to control a tape recorder for automatic recording of a signal at a certain time.

As fas as reception quality is concerned, the Grundig Satellit 600 offers similar quality as other portable sets or amateur radio receivers in the same price segment. At it's time, Grundig followed an elevated price / high quality strategy, so the "top of the range" Grundig Satellit receivers never have been a bargain. Some portable sets aimed at the amateur radio market offered a wider choice of I.F. filters and additional goodies to improve reception, like passband tuning or a notch filter.
The Grundig is not a "hard core DX machine" nor a travel portable, it is a fantastic set for the shortwave program listener and might find it's use on some private yachts to catch weather reports and the latest news from the shore (only the following model Satellit 650 came with an "Admission to maritime use").
Similar to the Satellit 3400, the Satellit 600 has an excellent FM tuner, but was not yet capable to decode RDS informations, a small tool like the "Conrad RDS manager" might be helpful for the identification of unknown FM signals.