Uniden Bearcat SR30C, 500-Channel Compact Handheld Scanner, Close Call RF Capture, Turbo Search, PC programable, NASCAR, Racing, Aviation, Marine, Railroad, and Non-Digital Police, Fire, Public Safety

It was great quality although a tad complex to learn how to use without looking at the instructions.

Works great for Indycar races. Alpha tagging of channels is a great feature so I know which driver Im listening to.

The scanner was more difficult to program than I expected Im still trying to figure it out

Disappointed with this unit. I bought it to tune in to my local airport while @ home or driving for quick flight. I live a mile away from my local airport and I barely hear the tower or the ATIS. Quality is very cheap. I returned the unit and bought an old Radio Shack scanner from EBay. Much better.

I’m a huge rail fan and I love that it’s got the different bands already programmed. Needed a little tweaking (meaning locking out spurious signals) and it does exactly what I need. I used it with an external antenna so I can sit in my car and have good coverage. Definitely recommend this little guy.

Just what I needed for monitoring emergency activity! The battery-life on the rechargeable unit is long-lasting. Nice to take-out for a few days without having to charge.

The ONLY problem you are going to have with this scanner is programming it according to the instructions in the manual, because theyre not great. However, there are a ton of YouTube videos about this unit; watch one and youll be like yeah, this is super easy. The only reason I can think of why youd want a more upscale scanner is if your local police department uses digital radios - more and more departments go that way every year - and you want to listen to the cops. This one wont do that; the one that will is $339.49. This radio will tune in any kind of auto racing, plus weather, aviation, marine and railroad traffic. This can be programmed from a Windows PC; as I am a Mac person thats not an option for me, but programming it from the front panel is easy to do. This does not support Bluetooth out of the box. If you have a good pair of Bluetooth headphones, Amazon sells adapters for less than $20 that will interface your headphones to this scanner. For MOST purposes these are fine. For auto racing they are not - it is very loud at the speedway and you need isolation headphones, such as the Race Day Electronics headphones I bought from Amazon. Those are awesome. I use them for woodworking as well as going to races and they work well both places. BIG recommendation: buy Ni-MH batteries because that will save you a lot of cash. The scanner will recharge Ni-MH batteries so you dont need a separate charger. Program it before you go to the speedway so its ready for you when you get there. It will cost you $47.95 to rent a scanner at a race, and it must be returned when you leave. If you buy this scanner and a set of headphones, youll be saving money at your third race. AND its yours! Also consider: they dont rent scanners at airports or on Amtrak trains and that traffic is a lot of fun to listen to. Its really worth it to have your own scanner.

I have worn out 3 Uniden scanners in 25 years. These are the best handheld scanners out there. New for me was the volume knob, while scanning when something happens you can give it a quick tap and it will stop on that frequency. The price was right because this was an Amazon return. Came in original packaging and was flawless.

I own multiple scanners and have been scanning for well over 30 years - this little Bearcat is incredibly inconvenient to program - turn the volume and/or squelch up or down - but most of all, just to turn on and off. It’s reception is very poor compared with all my other hand held scanners - I used various antennas to see if there was improvement. The best thing it does is search active frequencies, so I use it as a “search scanner” to find active frequencies so as to load them in my other units. For auto racing or for listening to Emergency services close by, it would be fine. But for anything more then 2-3 miles away that’s not being broadcast through a county wide repeater - forget it.

I bought this to try because some reviews said it was good for beginners. Id have to disagree. No matter what I did, I couldnt get it to work. I tried just scanning but it didnt pick things up very often. Tried entering frequencies but couldnt get it to take. Not for me, I returned it.