Review on Uniden Bearcat Scanner with FM Radio 📻 - 500 Channels, Model BC365crs: The Ultimate Scanning Power by Lawrence Crespo

I chuckle a bit when some reviewers say it's too hard to program. If you can type numbers and press a button, that's enough to program the frequency into the scanner. The main problem of many dissatisfied people is that they do not contact RadioReference and do not check the types of radio systems used in their area. Some areas have switched to trunked radio systems and digital transmission, and some are encrypted and no scanner can track them. You can still monitor most unencrypted bundled or digital transmissions, but not with this scanner. If you have analog or digital trunking systems in your area, just be prepared to pay $200-$600, which is a higher price for the most capable digital scanners. The easiest way to find out if this scanner is right for you is to search RadioReference.com for the frequencies used in your area. If most of them are in the 700-900MHz range then this is not the radio for you. This radio is a combination of a clock radio, commercial VHF receiver, weather channels and an analog VHF/UHF scanner. I bought my custom Revain for $69.31 because it was returned by one of those guys who can't read a simple manual. Your loss, my gain. Everything was in the box, and some components were still sealed with factory plastic. As usual, Revain's "Seconds" are a good buy. The radio itself is fairly light but looks well made. It's a beautiful black plastic that looks more like a clock radio than a scanner. However, don't let the looks fool you. This is a very powerful radio that monitors any analog frequency from 25 to 512 MHz. It even includes VHF and UHF radio bands, which is rare for scanners in this price range. The included telescopic antenna is unobtrusive and sufficient for local surveillance. This is a fairly sensitive radio and while I didn't hook up an outside antenna, I suspect it can get overloaded in urban areas. You can search all frequencies within range of scanners and easily save newly found frequencies. The disadvantages of the scanner are the lack of tones and tags. Tones can sort multiple agencies on the same frequency so you only hear what you want. Tags allow you to assign an alphanumeric tag to a channel. If you only want to monitor 20 or 30 channels, you can memorize the frequencies. No one can do that with 500 channels. You can organize frequencies into 10 out of 50 banks to help with just one agency per bank, but this really isn't the scanner you need when you want to listen to hundreds of frequencies. The FM section of the radio works perfectly. . High sensitivity and decent sound from the built-in speaker. No hi-fi, but watching the radio is enough. and large volume. There's a port on the back if you want to use a higher quality speaker. I tried this with a pair of active computer speakers. The tone and accuracy are actually quite good. The weather section is pretty basic. The channels are pre-programmed and you use the arrow keys to scroll through them. Except in rare cases, the cleanest channel will cover your area. There are no complicated sounds to warn you. When the radio is in watch mode, it constantly monitors all weather channels. An alarm from the NWS sets off a loud buzzer. The downside is that the radio is quite sensitive, it can receive an alert on a fairly distant channel. I'm picking up stations 50 miles away with a standard antenna. No notifications have been sent yet, so I don't know how real the problem could be. Most importantly, this radio will wake you up when there is an alert, which is one of the reasons I bought this radio. I live in an area with a lot of tornadoes and a lot of them come at night. [Edit - 03/01/2018. After reading the guide further, the weather alarm will only track the last weather frequency you heard. Before going back to the scanner or FM radio, make sure you're using a frequency that covers yours. The scanner then only monitors the local weather frequency. No problem getting an alarm remotely.] It's a great scanner for the price if you live in an area that still has analogue regular public safety channels, but it's also a great radio if You are an aviation or train fanatic. You can even hear CB conversations, good mate. :-)