Uniden Bearcat BC125AT Handheld Scanner, 500-Alpha-Tagged Channels, Close Call Technology, PC Programable, Aviation, Marine, Railroad, NASCAR, Racing, and Non-Digital Police/Fire/Public Safety.

I am disappointed with this purchase mainly due to the cost of it. It does work pretty well. Most reviewers of this device that gave it 1 star spoke of problems they had with the device and most of their problems was a result of not reading the user manual. Such as the All Channels Locked Out! warning that came up on one user. Scanning channels requires you to first save a frequency on the device then it will scan saved frequencies. There is a Search button that will search every individual frequency right out the box. Super easy to use and much faster at scanning than my Baofeng F8HP is. You can even choose if you only want certain bands scanned or all of them if you want to. If you hit Function then Search it will do a service search which means it will scan known police, fire/ems, Civ air, military air, ham only bands, and even walkie talkie and CB radio frequencies. FRS/MURS/GMRS. I was able to find a nearby construction site while scanning the FRS bank. It was the 2 people that have hold the Stop and Slow signs to direct traffic. I drove past them to test the Close Call feature and it couldnt pick up their signal as I drove past them while they were visibly talking on the walkie talkie. If I just scan FRS frequencies it will find it very quickly, but the Close Call doesnt find it so fast it needs a much stronger signal to find it. The nice thing about this scanner is it also tells you any tones it detects. So if a walkie talkie is on Channel 2 and Sub-channel 1 it would show a tone of 67Hz. Nifty for repeaters too. The Close Call feature was not as good as I hoped it would be. It hardly picked up any signal. It must be a very close range option. I was hoping it would scan and find any frequency that you can listen to. I could scan frequencies and find various conversations, but with Close Call it would only find really really close signals or a lot of interfering strong signals. Close call was one of the main reasons I bought this. I never bothered programming channels into it, but I know it would be tedious. It could be useful depending on what your needs are, but for me as just a hobbyist it isnt worth it. I compared its receiving ability side by side with my Baofeng F8HP and my Baofeng could hear a handful more signals than the Uniden could. this tells me the Uniden is probably scanning over frequencies without seeing a signal. It probably isnt the device itself, but likely just the antenna. Im sure with a good antenna like maybe a discone antenna would help you find a lot more signals. I tried searching HF signals with this device and I could not find one. I live 30 minutes south of Salt Lake City and the Salt Lake Valley here has around 2 million people so I would assume there should be some HF signals out here. This device is probably a lot more useful in bigger cities like Chicago or New York. I did find a conversation on every other band including civilian and military air. t wish the features of this device could be built into a HAM radio without increasing its size. This thing is kind of chunky its much bigger than most HAM handhelds are, so isnt super convenient to carry, but I really dont see anything better an smaller on the market. I thought it would be nice in the backcountry to find signals in case you needed to contact someone to relay for help. It still might be nice for that, but I dont know for sure. I did however find a better stationary scanning option recently called Software Defined Radio (SDR) Here on amazon there is a USB device called the RTL-SDR for $17. It turns your computer into a radio receiver. It lets software do the work of analyzing vs the bulky and expensive hardware would you have to buy otherwise. It doesnt come with an antenna. It needs an SMA Female antenna to work with it. My dads rubber duckie ICOM antenna worked fine. I got the device set up from their website Quick Start Guide in less than 10 minutes and I was able to visually see radio frequencies and signals. It was super easy to tune to any frequency I wanted and easy to see where the spikes were on the software it was either interference or a signal. I quickly found a lot of HAM, Police, and Fire conversations as well as local FM radio. You need the right antenna to listen to HF frequencies though which I plan on getting since this device was so cheap and easy to use. I could listen to anything from 87Mhz-900Mhz with this USB device so far. It is capable of listening up to 18Ghz. Of course nothing really goes up that high, but you can even analyze wifi signals with it. Lots of fun! For a hobbyist that is definitely the more fun and affordable option. If you needed to make it portable then just get a small laptop for it.

This seems to be a very good scanner, but there is quite a steep learning curve. You do not just turn it on and start scanning. The radio requires extensive set up and programming before use which is rather difficult to understand for a novice like me. All of the frequencies and other specifics for what you want to listen to must be entered into the devices memory, which means you must know those things before you start. Luckily many of these are available online. The owners manual is not terribly well written and somewhat confusing. Hint: go to the Uniden web site and download the USB drivers and programming software. It is vastly easier than programming the scanner directly. I bought the scanner primarily to monitor aircraft traffic and it works amazingly well. I can hear the local air traffic control tower from my home which is over 15 miles away! Do your research before buying. Make sure what you want to listen to is even accessible. For example, many local police, fire and other frequencies are now encrypted or carried over proprietary networks which are not accessible to the public.

I am an experienced HAM Radio Operator and someone with substantial RF radio experience: If you have never owned radios of this type then you should know: Scanners, like this one, are not trivial pieces of equipment. many people buy them and think they are like a Mr Coffee appliance, in other words you just plug it in and it works. To get the most out of Scanners: 1.) they require programming. The Uniden supplied PC software is adequate and will get the job done, however it is nothing outstanding but it is FREE 2.) Antennas are the key to any radio reception. Scanners require NON-TUNED wire antennas like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NKDN6YK/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_E41kDbJ7R53JF for $8 it is a bargain. You should DISREGARD other comments you read about using 144/440 tuned ham Radio Transmitting Antennas. They will work fine if all you want to receive is in those frequency bands, but realize they are TUNED so their reception sensitivity will fall off rapidly when the antenna is out of its designed band. 3.) This is a fine piece of well designed gear, and for $100 it is a bargain. It has excellent sensitivity across all bands. PROS: Super fast scan speed, Clever well laid out keypad design that gives you access to menu functions with just a few simple keystrokes. 4.) Of course the CON is that they are using AA NiMH batteries. 4-6 Hours is top run time. Uniden made a bad design choice there, as this radio could have easily been designed to accept 18650 Li-Ion batteries then it would have run for days on one set. If you are going to use this radio on a daily basis then you will need a pocket full of AA and Powerex Charger to properly maintain them. I read many comments here in these reviews from well meaning folks that are simply in over their head and then say this is a bad scanner. My suggestion is to find a local Ham Radio Operator to explain some of the principles of how RF works, and to help you with programming and operation of this type of equipment. It is not rocket science, but there is a little learning curve.

I got this scanner so I can train watch and know which train Im seeing. Programming the frequencies into the scanner was pretty easy for me after a little trial and error, but I figured it out. My one complaint would be that it doesnt have a whole lot of range beyond the tracks but a better antenna would probably do the trick.

PROS: Its a lot of scanner for the money. Battery life is about 7-8 hours before it needs recharged. Audio quality is good considering the size of the speaker. Signal sensitivity with the supplied antenna is good. The alpha tagging is awesome. The fit and finish are excellent. The display is excellent. CONS: The owners manual does not do an adequate job of getting the new owner over the initial learning hump needed to setup the scanner. Im a ham radio operator with plenty of experience setting up new radios, yet it took me well over an hour before I became proficient at programming channels and tagging them. Once learned though its dead easy. Programming hints: Any channel that has not been assigned a frequency becomes, by default, locked out. New out of the box the scanner will display a all channels locked out message because you havent yet assigned a frequency to a channel. There is nothing wrong with your scanner. The hold button acts somewhat the same as a manual button on other scanner in that it stops the scanner on a single channel when it is scanning. Once stopped on that channel, use the volume knob to scroll through the channels. In that manner. press the hold button to access the channel you want to add the frequency to. Press Func followed immediately by the PrgE key. Use the volume knob to scroll to enter frequency. Press the PrgE key again. Enter the freq using the keypad numbers. Press PrgE again. Now the radio receiver has a frequency to scan. There is no Menu button. The menu of available actions is spread out among those keys that have secondary red lettering. To access that portion of the menu found on the red lettering keys you must push the Func immediately prior to pushing the red lettering keys. Then use the volume knob to scroll through the available actions, followed by the PrgE key to access that portion of the menu you wish to access. As clunky as my programming hints are they are more clear than the manual.

I bought this scanner because, according to data cited on RadioReference.com, my local police department is accessible with this scanner. TIP for the unaware: DONT believe a thing that RadioReference.com tells you. I just got finished talking with someone in the communications department of my local PD and they changed over to digital communications TWO YEARS AGO! Since I live in a little po-dunk city, you can be sure that your local emergency departments have all changed over to digital as well. The only chatter this scanner picks up is the local cab company. If you download the available software, this scanner is easy to program. But thats a moot point when you cant tune in to any of the important channels broadcasting in your area. Be sure to note the date of any positive review for this product. Time has moved on. Due to advances in technology, this radio is useful only if you specifically want to listen to NOAA weather reports and the pedantic conversations of local amateur radio operators. Dont get me wrong, this is a nice scanner. But its a total waste of money if your intent is to listen to your local emergency services. BUY A DIGITAL SCANNER. This one is WAY behind the times.

It’s a descent scanner. Battery life is about 3-4 hours (rechargeable). Could be better. Lastly, I feel Uniden could have spent literally $3 dollars more and put in a 200% much much better speaker.

No charging system. Have to charge using laptop? Does not hold charge long!

Hard to program and instructions are not user friendly.