Uniden BC355N 800 MHz 300-Channel Base/Mobile Scanner, Close Call RF Capture, Pre-programmed Search “Action” Bands to Hear Police, Ambulance, Fire, Amateur Radio, Public Utilities, Weather, and More, Black

Easier to set up than other reviews lead you to believe. Pages 52-55 of manual - read it carefully and you will get hang of it quickly. One drawback I (reason for 4 stars) is it scans one panel at a time (police, for example) and after a set time moves into the next panel to scan instead of across all panels at the same time. You can remedy this by enabling the closest but then CB chatter can take over if you live near an interstate. Having replaced a 20 year old 10 channel BC scanner with this all I can say is Wow!

For 75 dollars, an excellent scanner for the price. Connect an outside rooftop antenna and a external speaker and you have a scanner as good with sensitivity and selectivity as a 500 dollar one. Contrary to what is said, you can monitor 800 MHz trunked radio systems, as long as you lock out the control data frequencies that run 24 hrs a day. Will not be as good as a scanner made for trunking, showing you the names of the talk groups, etc but does enable you to monitor trunked systems as long as they are not digital. The only con with this radio is there is not a keyboard, so you just cannot punch in a frequency. You have to scroll through the frequencies of a particular band and enter them into scanner that way. I wanted a scanner to monitor the marine VHF band during summers, and this scanner fits the bill perfectly for a very low price. Did not try this radio in a vehicle, so cannot comment on its performance. In any case you must plug in an external antenna into the BNC connector on the back of radio if you want decent performance. The little antenna supplied is good only for 5 miles max.

Can`t figure how to determine the frequencies that I need, so it isn`t useable. Hopefully, I will figure it out!

In order to set channels (i have list of local frequencies) you can not enter frequencies directly. You have to select the band width to scan and then when to get close to your frequency hit hold then arrow up or down to lock in the channel into your private bank. Other wise you have to scan for channels manually to find local frequencies to lock into the private bank. That takes a lot of time. Also the internal speak is not very clear (tinny sounding) I used an external speak to plug into the jack (much loader and Clearer).

Dislike unboxed shipment (sender? Or Amazon) easy porch pick) scanner took a while to program but eventually took the input.

I like the unit and added speaker. I did not like the Third Party Delivery (Fed Ex) Stated they left the package at the front door, but dropped it in wet grass (raining) approx. 1-2 feet from the busy road side. It could have been stolen, run over by a car or the postman of got wet enough to destroy the electrical unit.

when I turned this scanner on there was no sound, I connected an external speaker and it began to work.. I removed the bottom of the the unit and repaired the broken wire . Nice scanner after all that..

This is a hard review to write. I purchased this because as a CERT responder I wanted to know what was going on the Police, Fire, and Emergency channels. But so far the only channel I have received anything on is the Weather channel. I live near a large city in Southern Utah so it isnt like I am somewhere out in the boonies. Maybe the police, fire, and emergency people use a different range of frequencies than this radio is tuned for. I cant complain about the radio, but I am disappointed that I cant get the broadcasts I was hoping for.

I convinced myself to upgrade to this Uniden scanner to replace my old & outdated Uniden BC350C 50 channel scanner. I bought this scanner because I needed more programmable channel space for my important frequencies other than just 50 channels which was all that my old scanner had or would let me program. When I received this scanner, I was quite happy getting ready to set it up & receive 250 more programmable channels & space for frequencies than my old, outdated Uniden scanner had. Once I got it set up & started programming my frequencies, I ran into a bad downgrade issue that I was not aware of when I purchased it. The downgrade of this scanner: It will let you program up to 300 frequencies into it as described but the real catch to this is that you can only program up to 100 channels/frequencies into the best & most useful bank on this scanner being the(Private) Bank but not 300 like I was expecting to be able to program into the (Private) bank. The other 200 programmable channels are only available in the following shared banks: PD/FD/EMG & AIR/MRN. What this means is that if you need to program more than 100 channels/frequencies onto this scanner, youll have to program the other +100 of your scanner frequencies into these other shared banks/categories which then means that you cannot just listen to your own private/important frequencies that you have programmed in these shared banks on this scanner... You will in fact have to hear & listen to everything else that is going on under these Bank categories too which to me is nothing but a terrible annoyance. If you are like me, you may only want to hear & listen to your chosen programmed frequencies & not everything else too like, when the scanner gets stuck on a blank frequency with pure Black noise in the PD/FD/EMG or AIR/MRN Banks every 10 seconds & wont stop until you come & lock it out on the scanner. This means that you may not even hear anything that is going on with your important programmed frequencies in these other two Banks because there will be too much other noise & things going on under these shared banks/categories for you to hear anything that is going on with your programmed frequencies that you needed or wanted to program & listen to for your purposes. I expected for this scanner to let me program all of my important frequencies into the one bank that is most important & the most useful on this scanner. Again that is the (Private) bank which I thought it would let me program 300 channels/frequencies into that specific bank. That was not the case but instead only holds 100 channels/frequencies in this useful (Private) bank. Bummer this was to me to find this out!! (:-(

I do like it but I just cant program the scanner