Review on Enhanced WS1040 Handheld Digital Scanner Radio by Whistler by Ryan Saxton

I had this radio 11 days before I printed the return label. I wanted to like it, I really did. My Experience: Licensed ham radio operator with 22 years experience, I understand electronics/computers, work in HF/telecom and have been playing around with radios and scanners for as long as I can remember. Like I said, I wanted to like it. It's well built with a solid body. It's easy to program on the computer using the zip function and EZ Scan software if you have experience. If this is your first time, this may not be for you. Free modulation upgrades are attractive. The scan list and virtual scanner were great. The recording opportunity was great. The bad news is that she is quite deaf. Normal or digital, it captures almost nothing. I've tried several locations (large metro areas) including towers that I have access to and that are at high altitudes with zero location line obstacles. I've tried several antennas, a mobile mount, an upgraded RF antenna, etc. Stock antennas suck on all portable radios. He almost doesn't want to receive any messages. When he decides to demodulate a signal, his main goal seems to be to instantly scan and cut that frequency, even with the lowest possible noise gate and enabled latency. Priority seemed to help. P25 Forget it if you don't want to hear digitally distorted sound. I tried several things to get it working. I even called Whistler and you will see from other reviews that you can ask someone to take your call but they will take your name and number and call you back in two days. Finally, when I spoke to support twice, they didn't want to fix any errors, they just wanted me to send them. Loudness is rubbish too. It is not audible in a noisy mobile environment. I have it maxed out and connected to my boosted aux input on my car and you need to hear when it works. Some days it had a lot of traffic, 98 percent of the time it didn't. so expensive to work. This scanner would be amazing if it did what it was designed to do and pick up radio communications. It's not like this. At least not very well. Maybe it was just this squad, but I didn't want to risk it. My 10 year old bear cat had 10x more traffic compared to this one (side by side). Take a chance, you might get a good one. This is my 11 day experience with it.