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Review on πŸ”’ Uniden Bearcat BCT8 BearTracker Warning System with 800 MHz TrunkTracker III: Stay Informed and Secure! by Javarie Malick

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Great scanner, easy to program, upgradeable

I have two of these scanners, one for each device. For the money this is a great buy. It's easy to work with and program (although I did most of the programming in software). I updated the firmware on both of my scanners to apply the 800MHz remapping update and everything went smoothly. In hindsight, however, I'd rather pay more for an alpha tag scanner that lets you name a frequency or talkgroup so you can see at a glance who you're listening to. If you only listen to a few agencies on BCT8, you will recognize the numeric identifiers of the talkgroups or frequencies. However, if you want to program many agencies or discussion groups, you will need alpha tags. I speak only from my experience. Here's the basic info that Uniden didn't mention in their manual: When you press the DATA button, the scanner toggles between showing scan lists and showing banks. This allows you to quickly and safely activate/deactivate banks or scan lists as needed while driving. In 2015 I sold my two BCT8 scanners and replaced them with BCD996P2 scanners. The reason for this is that more and more agencies are switching to digital trunked radio systems. In fact, my hometown switched to a nationwide digital system in 2014, rendering my BCT8s virtually unusable. Scanners like the BCT8 and its bigger brother, the BC780XLT, have the best nighttime displays of any mobile scanner ever made. The backlit buttons on Uniden's new DMA scanners, BCT15X to BCD536HP, are too dim. I will miss that in BCT8.

Pros
  • Decent performance
Cons
  • Miscellaneous Miscellaneous