Uniden BEARCAT 980 40- Channel SSB CB Radio with Sideband NOAA WeatherBand,7- Color Digital Display PA/CB Switch and Noise Cancelling Mic, Wireless Mic Compatible

Horribly dim. I saw other people say it was dim but this horribly dim. Everything works …..at night.

I really like this radio. Much better than I expected. Not quite the equal of my vintage Grant radios, but not as far short as I expected. Blows away Cobra. Stable and fairly sensitive. Good reports after removing paper inside mic. Really like the feel of mic and cord. I use the heck out of the handy and fine performing weather radio. For me, the best performing colors are the palest blue in daylight and the darkest green at night. The red puts out a bit less light but is not as readable to me. Get a clue and save the menu functions for when you are parked in a safe haven. Youd be better off texting than messing with menu functions while driving. Not designed for modifications, but R M Italy makes some dandy accessories that have been perfectly compatible with the fully factory stock and unmolested radio, at least in SSB, with a very low SWR(read on a separate highly accurate meter).

Overall a good radio in all honesty, especially for the price. On SSB, they do not tend to drift. Ive enjoyed two of these things. However, Ill get down to some cons... Do not, under and circumstance, clean the screen with anything other than a microfiber cloth. These screens scratch VERY easily. In a mobile truck application where things get a film of dust on them, good luck.... Next Ill point out the screen backlighting is not quite bright enough for sun contact in a mobile. Warning you on that as well. Lastly, my oldest one Ive owned has developed an issue to not turn on when I turn the power knob. All I get is a screen flicker, or a flash, then back out again. It at times takes multiple tries before I get it going. Its like a pull start motor....sometimes difficult to get the thing going but once going it has NO issues when it is going. Strange. My oldest unit is only 1yr, 5mo old.

The price and features combination make this a great buy. I have bought 3 of them in fact. I know the radios strengths and weaknesses. Why does anyone need 3 radios? I have 2 cars and a base station. These make great base stations if you know how to invert the power and use a battery in your home. Many radio buffs do this. Base stations cost so much more money but dont really perform much better. I have other radios too, including HAM radios. This radio has a few things to be aware of. The beeps are great for driving since you can change or adjust the stations without looking at it. (The beeps can be turned off) On SSB (Single Side Band) the clarifier has 2 knobs on top of each other. One is a broad tuner and the other is the fine tuner. No more chipmunks talking in the distance! (The way people sound when they are no clarified properly) The broad tune clarifier has a center notch stop you can feel without looking. Brilliant in the car! The LED screen is just not very bright and for a mobile device this is a real problem. It can be made brighter using the adjustment buttons/knobs but even in daylight mode at the brightest setting it is hard to see. Still, this is not important when you are driving, you just need to know the channel and nothing else. It has a digital meter on it as well and built in SWR but I only use these when I am stopped and not driving. I tested the accuracy of the built in SWR as well by hooking up a SWR meter. It is VERY close to the actual SWR meter. I feel very safe after testing this over and over that the built in SWR is giving me good readings. Warnings: Do NOT use a power mic on this (With a caveat, read on), it has a built in power mic (Gain control) for any mic hooked up to it. It comes with a microphone adapter too so that other mics can be used. DO NOT run this with a Noise Cancelling Mic and run this on volume setting 4. It will over modulate and possibly damage the radio. I know this first hand. I blew the radio up literally with a Noise Cancelling microphone. Smoke out of the radio. I should say I bought 4 of these because that is the real truth, I learned a hard lesson.I found I could run a Noise cancelling mic if I kept the volume at 2 and never above 3 on the volume (gain) control. There are 4 volumes levels on this control. I would have liked to have seen a more finer adjustment for this (10 volume levels instead of 4), but this works. Getting the SWR is critical for AM broadcasting. If you get the SWR right your signal is cleaner and matches up better with the carrier wave you are sending out. You talk further and better with a nice SWR (1.0 is perfect, but anything below 1.5 is acceptable, most people who understand SWR can get their antenna tuned to 1.1 or 1.2), and this radio has that all covered nicely. In short, this is a great radio, and as a radio operator for over 40 years, I really like this radio.

The CB radio itself has been fantastic. Works very well plowing snow on the Interstate. Up until this year 2023, everything has been working just swell. About two weeks ago, a coworker buddy of mine had his radio start to give him fits. It wouldnt key out. After some troubleshooting, it was determined that the key out button linkage to the electrical switch inside the microphone has a manufacturers defect. A piece of plastic wore and one part the was supposed to engage another part slipped under the linkage instead of pushing on it. Then, other pivot parts, all plastic, were found to be sheared off inside. Microphone was never subjected to abuse, just use, and it died. Now my microphone is exhibiting the same symptoms. It is starting to not key out consistently when the button is pressed. Sometimes it keys out, sometimes it doesnt. Nothing more frustrating than trying to discuss a lane transition plan with a plowing partner and they keep asking can you hear me and you hear them fine, but the stupid microphone will not key out. Buyer be warned. They arent cheap to buy either. I mean sure, Uniden could offer me a replacement...but why bother, unless they have identified and corrected a defect, youll likely just be in an important use scenario and the microphone just gives up on you. Sad. So sink of manufacturers making crap products, or crap components. You put your name on this thing Uniden...you own this. Good job in design and quality control. Astatic replacment on order.

Good radio so far. Ive had it for a few months and been on several trail runs with it. I was having a problem with intermittently distorted audio on receive and was beginning to think I was going to have to send it back for repair, but finally discovered that my coax connection in the rear of the radio had loosened. Tightened the coax connector and havent had any issues since. OBJECTIONS / ISSUES: Beeps for EVERYTHING get kind of annoying. Uses a 6 pin mic plug instead of the standard 4 pin, but comes with an adapter so you can use aftermarket mics like the Astatic RD104E-4B Road Devil I use on mine. (See review.) Plastic face plate scratches VERY easily, which is unfortunate in a dusty environment like an offroad vehicle. Also prone to bad glare, so if you prefer dim displays, youll find yourself unable to read it in bright light. LED intensity is adjustable, but the process to do so is unhandy. So switching from bright to dim for day/night is really not something youre likely to want to do on a regular basis. Not sure why they didnt just put a dim button or switch on the front panel like they did with the Bearcat 880 and 680 models. Youll almost certainly want an external speaker for any sort of serious use. The internal one is just barely tolerable. If it sounds like I hate it, I dont. Its a fine radio. Im just trying to point out some of the issues where it could stand improvement. If you dont need SSB, save yourself $15 and get the Bearcat 880. Or, if space is an issue, the Bearcat 680 is about another $15 less, but you sacrifice some bells & whistles with the 680, Wx being one of the very important ones, in my opinion.

90% of CB radio is the antenna, so not much to say here other than this is a good radio with lots of features. I used it in my Jeep for offroading. Kids like the selectable colors for the display and wife likes the weather band feature. Although, weather band, as with any frequency, is useless if you are down in a valley or gulley where the signal cant get to you. Also, the radio comes with seven selectable display colors, but no amber color. Two different greens and two different blues, a purple, a white, and a red, but no amber. I wouldve thought amber would be a no-brainer. They have a nice red, so I guess that will do for night work. Controls are easy to use and selecting modes fairly intuitive. The power wire connection at the back, being a plug in style instead of hard-wired to the radio, was a nice touch I thought. Nicer than my old Uniden Pro520XL anyway. Also, emblazoned fairly obviously on the box are the various benefits to having an SSB mode. 80 extra channels! it says, or something like that. But, inside the box? In the manual? Not a word about SSB, what it is or how it works. I guess they expect you to already know that part, or muddle through, but some support literature to go along with an actual feature they are selling on their radio would help. Other than that. good equipment so far.

I feel like its my duty to comment. Take note that the LCD display failed just after the warranty expired. And, apparently, this is not unusual. It cost me $82.00 for the repair and shipping to and from Uniden. Ok, they fixed it and well see how long it last this time. The issue driving my comment is the lack of care for my radio during the repair. How is it that the technician would not take the time to wipe his finger prints off of the inside of the display screen? Im stuck looking at this now. Of course I called and only got an Im sorry from them. Hacks!!!

It is as advertised

Cant add much more than the other positive reviews except that when powered by a power supply indoors (12.5 volts) output power is 3 watts AM, 9 watts SSB. When running off of truck/alternator (13.8 - 14.3 volts) output power is dead on 4 watts AM, 10-12 watts SSB and have not made any internal adjustments. Also, as far as the screen scratching easily, I agree. My solution was to get a screen protector for a Sony PSP handheld game system and trim it to fit with an x-acto knife and a straight-edge. Made contacts from Midwest to New York, Northern Idaho, Ontario-Niagara Falls and Puerto Rico on SSB with good reports on my audio. I have this paired up with a Solarcon I-Max 2000 antenna and no radial kit running barefoot. Overall very happy with this radio and purchased another. Recommended. ***UPDATE*** My second radio stopped transmitting and the screen started going nuts 15 days after purchase. Amazon was great and sent out a replacement with 2-day shipping. I have to knock off 1 star for the transmit and screen going out. I do understand anything made on an assembly line will produce a few lemons out of the bunch but I have read of this happening to others and hope it is not a common occurrence. My first radio is still working great. I will update if anything else goes wrong. I do give amazon 5 stars for their great customer service. *****UPDATE 12/17/2016***** I purchased another one of these and it was way off frequency on receive and transmit. Contacted amazon and they sent another one very quickly. The replacement looked used (packaging looked like it had been removed, radio had large grey, possibly paint, thumbprint on back of radio, would not wipe off). This one was way off frequency also and was sent back for a refund. This is a newer design Amazon is currently selling and the model is 980SSBW (maybe the W designates worse), the older ones were model 980SSB and they are good radios. Uniden also dropped the warranty from 2 years on the older model 980 to one year on the newer 980s, that is very telling of the quality. I recently had a bad experience with two different Galaxy DX-979s (See my review, they both had receive problems). All the CB radio manufacturers seem to be making their radios in Vietnam now and I think the quality is suffering. I wonder if they use calibrated frequency counters when building these new Uniden 980s or maybe the workers are rushed or dont care. Uniden needs to step up their game on these radios. If Uniden would make their service manuals available maybe these radios would not have to be sent back when the frequency is off. I dont know what is going on with the radios going out used. I was told by an Amazon customer rep that returns dont get resold, but There are other reviewers that stated they received used radios also. Maybe Uniden is repackaging factory serviced units as new. I really like the two 980s I purchased in 2015 but these new ones are lesser radios in my opinion.