Nascar Bearcat Portable Scanner

This scanner is probably one of the best scanner made it is portable light easy to set up and use. While listening to the scanner it comes in very loud and clear. What a great product.

I have had this scanner for a month now and am pleased with it overall and I do recommend it. I traditionally like to listen to the VHF Aircraft frequencies and started searching for and adding those frequencies first. Now I am starting to add Fire/Police/Medical etc. 200 stored frequencies is a whole lot more than the 20 I have on my ancient Bearcat 220 that is still working!

PROS:
Fast searching speed and ten different banks of 20 channels to organize and store frequencies
Small size that you can take with you
Use either two standard AA batteries or rechargeable batteries (with built-in recharger)
I like the separate squelch and volume knobs on the top
Scanner will set upright on a table or clip to your belt
Seems to pull-in frequencies equivalent to my Bearcat 220 table model w/antenna
Close Call RF Capture is a great feature to find unexpected channels

CONS:
Display panel is hard for me to see sitting 2-3 feet away. This is especially a problem when you are scanning and want to see what new frequency just displayed. There is a Display Light that helps but it only activates manually for 15 seconds.
Speaker quality is adequate but volume seems low when outside (ear buds are helpful)

Plan on reading the manual several times and eventually you will start to figure-out the many scanning capabilities of this scanner. For example there is a feature called Chain Search where you will find 10 preset frequency ranges to search. Turns out you can change any of those preset frequency ranges to your liking. After re-reading the manual again, I came across this sentence: "You can also change each range to a range you set." The basic info is there, but you will have to dig for it!

I received this for christmas, and I really like it a lot, yeah programming is a little hard, but not impossible, there is a lot of frequencies listed on the internet for free, it just takes a little searching and then you can enter known frequencies into it, the user manual sort of stinks, nothing seems too be in generic terms for novices like myself, so there is a learning curve on instructions, so here's a little free help, when your searching for content in your local area like police frequencies, turn on the unit, Press function and 3/Svc button, Police will appear on the display, by pressing it again FIRE and other services will appear, so scan POLICE first, when you hear activity on the radio, Push HOLD button, and FUNC and then E/Pgm button twice. it should enter that frequency into an available bank, and follow same procedures everytime, please read instructions anyways, because it will educate you, and you will find where they forgot to mention something important, outside of that, I like this scanner, for the price, you can't beat it, its better than my base unit, I would recommend this radio for emergencies around the home.

This scanner works great. I read the reviews and was a little leery of being able to program it. My daughter and I did it together, there was a step that wasn't printed in the instruction book, we had to hit the Hold button twice to where it'd clear the programed code that was showing on the screen to enter the new code. But once we figured that out it was a breeze. I was able to get the scanner codes off the Internet at [...], go to their site and click on your state and open up which ones you want to program. I live in a rural area and it picks up real well. I like being able to hear what's going on in my neighborhood. I received it fast, about 4 days, through Amazons free shipping. I live in Hawaii.
I have not been disappointed with the items I've purchased through Amazon as of yet and the reviews help me make my decisions on my purchases.

Jumping through the function modes to access features while scanning is a big pain in the butt! By the time you get the feature or mode you want, the action you wanted to catch is almost done. Whoever designed this rarely did any actual emergency scanning. It's a terrible design & un-intuitive.

The speaker is loud enough in a quiet room if the person is speaking loud & clear close to the microphone at 100% modulation. Unfortunately most of the people talking are mumbling, quiet, or talk with the microphone a foot or more from their mouth, so it's lacking a lot in audio gain & volume for most people. If a room has a lot of ambient noise, you may still hear the radio, but can't understand anything anyone is saying on the radio unless you're sitting right next to it.

Now for the good news.

For the price you do get a lot of good, cool, stuff, features, & memory/channels. It's small, & easy to carry.

My 2500mah batteries I use in it last a very long time, so it's efficient.

It's triple conversion, so less interference & noise.

So it's a pain to use, not practical or loud, but can serve well as a cheap basic scanner as long as you're not an enthusiast about it, or need to change modes, functions, or programs in a hurry.