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

You will know whats going on with this radio

Live three miles out of town and it will not pick anything

The BC355N is perfect for those who desire a simple easy to setup and operate radio. Ability to key pad frequencies into unit would make it a 5++. I have owned a significant number of radios over the years and must say this is a great unit for the $. I will also say that a scanner is only as good as the Antenna which is attached to it so before you give up on a radio add a better antenna first. Phil Tee Staten Island NY

Serurity guard

Is it a great scanner? No. Is it a decent scanner in an area with only analog comms? Definitely. Dont expect the world from it, but it works well for what it is.

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.

It’s a great scanner over all. Programming is a little to hard for a beginners. I really like it’s low profile making it easy to move around from place to place. They have included all the cables in the package. It’s well worth the money. I am going to recommend it to anyone looking for a quality scanner.

Programming can be a bit confusing to figure out at first but once programmed you wont need to do it anymore. A numeric keypad would have made it easier and faster than scrolling to look for the one you want to save. With the speaker being on the bottom of the unit you must use the fold-out stand to avoid the sound from being muffled and doing so makes the telescopic antenna extend at an angle instead of straight up so it takes up more space than its footprint would lead you to believe. But the unit is tiny so this shouldnt be an issue for most though I would assume that reception would be slightly better if the antenna was straight up and down instead of at an angle. Having small feet on all four corners or having the speaker come out of the top of the unit would have been a better idea. You can also use an external speaker to avoid this small issue. I have no idea on its range as I live relatively close to the repeaters in my town but it seems to do pretty well. I can hear car communications just fine too. Having 800MHz capabilities is not useful where I live but most scanners at this price point dont have that frequency range so it might be useful for some. CB is a feature that I will probably never use. I tried it and got nothing. CB is pretty much dead anyway. Overall its a decent scanner and you wont find very many others with all of the features that this one has at this price.

I program scanners all the time and I needed the manual for this one. It is not very easy to use and very tedious to program. I bought it to monitor 3 specific local analog frequencies and because of its small form factor. For my purposes, it’s adequate. However, even for beginners, spend a few extra few dollars as there are much more capable, and less frustrating, entry-level scanners available from Uniden.

Will not receive some am frequencies.