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Reviews For: Uniden Bearcat BR330T

Category: Receivers: Scanners

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Review Summary For : Uniden Bearcat BR330T
Reviews: 2MSRP: discontinued
Description:
bc-br330t
Product is in production
More Info: http://
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0024
TRXWGN Rating: 2014-09-06
One of a kind Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
If there ever was a jack of all trades scanner, BR330T fits the bill. It is the "semi-legendary" wide band trunking scanner. The size is about perfect, but it may be more difficult to control than a larger scanner with more button real estate. It takes two button presses and a knob turn to adjust the squelch, whereas other scanners just have a dedicated squelch knob. It can pick up nearly everything analog, though below 30 MHz, not very well, though a long wire antenna helps. There is no SSB, either. It can pick up broadcast FM well and AM nearly adequately. I would not attempt to program this "dynamic memory" scanner by hand, but I was able to get it to work without too much difficulty with the available free and paid software (bcTool, FreeSCAN and ARC330). I heard the display can be hard to read in some lighting conditions and the squelch tail is long. True, to both but not excessively. My cheaper Pro-137, which shares the same case, has a brighter back light and clearer display, for example. Overall, the sensitivity was very good; I was able to hear my airport frequencies better than I have with my GRE scanner. Is it worth $495, as advertised online? No. Under $150? Yes. It may still arguably be the "best" analog trucking scanner. The wide band aspects are a bonus, but of limited functionality.
W2WHT Rating: 2007-12-29
good scanner Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have had my Uniden Bearcat BR330 for about 1 1/2 years. I use it as my home scanner. I have an external speaker connected which does improve the volume of the audio substantially.
Many people complain about the menu driven programming, but to be honest, it is the easiest radio I have to program. I am a net operator for our skywarn group and I use this radio to monitor public safety activity. My only complaint is the radio is somewhat of a battery hog. I am not sure if it is the radio in general, or my radio in particular. Still, it is very sensitive and the ability to operate in weather alert mode in the background is helpful. This model has the "nascar" frequencies and several regional public safety frequencies pre-loaded, but you can opt to not include any of that in your memory on a reset of the unit. That allows you to program a minimum of 2 thousand frequencies with text tags for each one. I have not used this radio in trunking at all and cannot comment on how well it works in that respect. If you can find one for sale, either used or new, it is a solid scanner.