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.

Bought this for the car to go along with my ham radio hand-held. This is a great little scanner for the money. Very easy to program with a PC and great battery life. It comes with rechargeable batteries, but like other scanners, the antenna has lousy gain, so plan on getting something better. I dont care about P25 or other digital modes, so that was not a problem for me. The keypad is very easy to use and once you know the layout you can easily operate it in the dark, while driving with one hand. Audio is plenty loud. It has an extra feature that is always scanning for near field transmissions, just in case you are wondering if there is a hidden transmitter close by. :-)

This purchase was made when the display on my old PRO-95 quit working. I decided I didnt need the 800MHz channels or trunking capability since I mainly use the scanner for listening to railroads. I was very happy with the BC125AT and the software that you can download for free. The first two banks I programmed in all the railroad frequencies and then the remaining ones used for police, fire, HAM, and CB frequencies. The software makes it easy to replace the frequencies with only railroad frequencies with one railroad occupying one bank. I like the fact that it uses standard AA rechargeable batteries that can be charged in the scanner. Seems to hold the charge for a long time, but am considering ordering batteries with higher mAH capacities for extra batteries. I havent had a chance to use the scanner with my railroad frequency tuned antenna on my vehicle, so I dont know how sensitive it is to pick up trains calling out signals from a good distance away. Overall, I am very happy with this replacement for my old scanner.

I like it cause it fits in my pocket but, its the worst scanner that I have ever had to program !!

I got a BC72XLT a couple years ago, and never regretted that purchase. I saw the features of this radio and decided it was worth the upgrade. I think its definitely worth it for someone looking for a few more features. Alpha Tags - so you know what youre listening to, you dont have to memorize what frequencies are USB programming - MUCH easier to program new frequencies. You can also back up everything to a file, so you can change the entire setup of the banks really quickly. Nice if you go on vacation, because you can enter all the new frequencies on the computer, back up the old setup and apply the new setup. When you get back, it takes less than a minute to put the old setup back on. USB charging - you dont need a special AC charger for the radio, it can charge from a computer or USB charger. If you plan on using it at home or in one place a lot, I would definitely suggest getting a USB charger (maybe with a mini USB plug already on it). This helps to get it away from the computer, which can cause interference. It comes with 2 rechargeable AA batteries, which seem to last maybe 8 hours on a charge. Backlight and frequent transmissions could reduce this, but I have been very happy with battery life. Military Frequencies - one of the main things that convinced me to get this radio. I have to admit I havent heard anything except the UHF from airport towers, but I will be around more UHF traffic soon and I expect to get a lot more from this. Better Programming - you can set delay specifically to each channel. You can also set a temporary lockout, which only locks a channel out until you turn off the radio. Useful for localized interference. Backlight Options - you can set the backlight to come on only with squelch, so it is off until it picks up a signal. DND Mode - this stands for do not disturb. This means that the close call or priority modes will only do their checks when scanning. Once it picks up a channel, it will not interrupt the channel to do those checks. This is really nice, because even the short pauses to do those checks can make you miss key information in a transmission. Close Call memory - you can store the frequencies found in close call mode to a small bank for later review or scanning. Large banks - 50 channels in each bank. Sometimes I have to combine smaller categories into one bank, but overall it is good to have plenty of space in a bank. Also good to have more frequencies overall. Dedicated Weather Function - Fn-3 accesses weather radio modes, nice to have when there is bad weather. There is also a weather function to scan weather radio in the background for alerts. Easier service search - When in service search mode, each service is treated like a bank and can be turned on or off. This is much more intuitive and lets you only choose the ones you are interested in. These are: Police, Fire/Emergency, Ham, Marine, Railroad, Civil Air, Military Air, CB Radio, FRS/GMRS/MURS (handheld civil radios), and Racing. You can also set custom ranges. There are other features, but these are the ones I found most useful.

It is suppose to be good, and You Tube video on it shows it in action. I obtained my refurbished in Canada and it came less a wrist strap but that is easy to fix at any camera store. Also any camera power plug you have with a USB port on it will charge this up off the wall socket and it has protection circuitry in it any way if you get the one that is to high up on the volts. Bad news so far there is no Macintosh software updater on it and it is best you use a PC to get the Uniden driver sorted out properly. I have not started it at all and there is some indication it will not work until you set it up on your PC first .. or wait till you get access to a PC to set it up with the driver download on the USB port. Once UNIDEN gets this worked out for Macintosh computers then it get 5 stars. I use it for the neighborhood watch as we do not have many cops in my county and the neighbors look out for each other for the most part. Lots of theft going on here apparently as there are lots of addicts in full drug mode.

UPDATE - 8/3/2020: If you buy a Newer Unit, DO NOT TRY TO DOWNLOAD THE FIRMWARE FROM THE UNIDEN WEBSITE, as it will reload an older version, if you have a Newly purchased Unit. Their Support Documentation, and every YouTube Video I looked at, directs you to the Uniden BC125AT Website/Webpage, which is outdated, and has at least one bad link (for the Driver downloads). I repeat DO NOT Download the Firmware update, if you have a version at or higher than 1.03.01. I know there at least Two firmware updates, after the download on their support page for the BC125AT. The documentation on their webpage does not tell you which firmware you are downloading, and after you update, there is no way to reload the previous (more current version) that you had, as I found no links to newer versions on Unidens website. or on the web. You can verify the firmware version on the unit that you have, when you power it on. This is absolutely POOR documentation and product support! The only reason I am not giving it a One Star, is that the programming software (which you should download) is a nice tool to be able to modify and save files, to load your on BC125AT. However, the process of spending a whole day (for someone who is not well versed in scanners) is tedious and time consuming, since the majority of info out there is outdated. This unit is fine for monitoring what I am looking to use it for (Analog Civil/Military Air Traffic), but I would not buy it for monitoring LEO/Police frequencies, as most are using Digital in the 800-900 mhz range. I would not buy this unit, if I had to do it again, being a newbie radio/scanner operator, because of the inaccurate and lack of support information available. It is probably fine for someone who has an extensive background in HAM or Scanning, however. All that said, I stand by my Original Review... ORIGINAL REVIEW: Not really happy with the information available on how to set-up this unit, even from the Manufacturers Webpage/Website and Unidens YouTube Videos, as both places need to be updated with current information. But they sure have no problems encouraging you to PAY for them to program it for you, which is Great for bottom line profits, but CRAPPY for customer service for the product, which is why this product is getting a poor review from this customer. Sure I could spend several hours reading the manual, and eventually I will, but I wanted to get some things programmed immediately, and expected their to be current information on the Web, but obviously my expectations werent met.

Bought a used one here on Amazon. Came with everything that would normally be inside the box, except they included the wrong kind of charging cable. I had an extra, so it was no big deal. It took me a few hours if messing with the scanner, watching YouTube videos and skimming the instructions to totally understand how it works. I went from having no idea what I was doing, to being able to use all its features in just a few days. Bummer that my local PD went digital, but I can still pick up some emergency services sometimes, government channels and of course railroad chatter. The range is a little more weak than I thought, but for an extra $20-40 you can get some real good antennas to improve that.

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.

I work in the digital LMR industry for first responders. I didnt have too much trouble figuring this radio out, but nothing about this radio is what you may be familiar with if youre used to working with analog scanners. All of the knobs and buttons are dual and triple use. For example, there is no designated volume or squelch knob. There is a single knob which serves several purposes, including volume or squelch. This is sort of a nuisance to me. However, I will live with its awkwardness for now. As far as a radio is concerned, it has good sensitivity and noise rejection.

Great analog scanner, however kind of outdated since just about every department is now using digital or in the process of switching to digital. However, if your only purpose is to monitor millitary planes, regular airplanes, boats, or trains then this is an excellent scanner. However, if you wish to monitor police, fire, EMS, etc... then check radio reference first to make sure your local area doesnt use digital yet. If you wish to monitor digital communications, go with the BCD436 or download the scanner app free on your phone to see if you can listen on there instead.