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

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.

Easier to set up than other reviews lead you to believe. Pages 52-55 of manual - read it carefully and you will get hang of it quickly. One drawback I (reason for 4 stars) is it scans one panel at a time (police, for example) and after a set time moves into the next panel to scan instead of across all panels at the same time. You can remedy this by enabling the closest but then CB chatter can take over if you live near an interstate. Having replaced a 20 year old 10 channel BC scanner with this all I can say is Wow!

Exactly as expected...

My husband is having an issue programming this scanner and it is currently sitting unused until I try to program it myself as he gets frustrated too easily

This is a good analog scanner if you know radio. If you do not know radio go with another unit. This will not get most government traffic(POLICE FIRE) today as they have gone to digital trunking which this radio does not do. The most traffic you will get on an analog scanner now is aircraft, HAM radio and marine. This scanner works fine for me.

As many have stated its easy to program add the freq to memory . However it is very difficult to get the freq displayed to program it into memory. Without keybord direct entry you must get the scanner to land on or close to the freq you want to add . Yes the up down arrows with the scanner in hold will allow you to manualy enter the freq . However the up down steps do not allow for inbetween freq entry . Speaker is very tinny and a lot of white noise in background so if you like listening to static this is the one for you . This can be corrected with a good external speaker. I own 6 other scanners and this is not the quality I expected of Uniden . Also be aware the reviews listed for this scanner seem to be mixed up from other scanners. This review is for Uniden 800 MHz 300-Channel Base Mobile Scanner (BC355N)

Doesnt pick up local lime it suppose to

Right out of the box this scanner is pre-programed to scan a huge number of known frequencies in use by fire, police, ambulance, CB, weather, and aircraft. The upside of this is that if all you do is plug it in and turn it on, you will immediately hear communication activity. The downside of this programming is that you will pick up signals you eventually decide dont interest you and locking out the ones you dont want turns out to be similar to swatting flies or playing whack-a-mole.... you have to catch it in the act Too, you cant eliminate or lock out all of the frequencies you dont want to scan because there is a numerical limit to how many frequencies the scanner will ignore. The scanner boasts 300 user programmable frequencies. This is true but misleading. Within the grouping of frequencies for police/fire/ambulance you can program 100 frequencies. Within the grouping for aircraft/marine, you can program another 100 frequencies. And there is a private group which can be programmed with 100 frequencies. Total = 300. But....within any of the ore-programed groups, say, aircraft, you cant make the scanner look for only the frequencies you programed. It will always look at your frequencies after it has scanned the ones it is pre-programed to scan. This wastes time and creates the possibility youll miss something you want/need to hear since a large number of the pre-programed frequencies are either always quiet or irrelevant to your interests. If there is a way to make the scanner completely ignore its factory programming and scan just the frequencies of interest to me, I havent yet figured it out. (I could have the scanner scan only the private frequency group and ignore everything else, but doing this limits the number of scanned frequencies to only 100..... not really a solution, in my opinion.) I do like the scanner. And it represents reasonable value for the money, in my opinion. Id like it more if I had more control over what it scans and what it doesnt scan.

This scanner after some time of playing around with became pretty easy to navigate. I knew from the start that it was analog but I didnt go digital because of the price difference. I thought that I would at least be able to pick up some local stations, but nothing. I live a good 45 minutes from NYC and I was picking up Brooklyn but nothing local. I will have to wait and get a digital scanner and see how it goes. I ended up returning the unit. I have to say though if you think your area is still running analog this scanner would be fine.

The sound is terrible. Sound like it’s coming out of a tube