Customer Reviews

Uniden BC350C 800 MHz Mobile Scanner

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I bought my first scanner from a local Church sale about two years ago. It was a crystal based Regency brand, that luckily had all of the correct crystals for the St. Louis area. I was hooked.

To this day I would never consider myself an afficionado or an expert, but I dabble around a bit, so take this review in that context.

I bought this Bearcat BC350C scanner as a birthday present to myself just a few days ago and it's a blast. Parts of the interface are undeniably clunky. Selecting to listen for just the Police or EMS/Fire bands is easy, but programming stuff is a bit icky. It's not complex, just slow - I'd rather be able punch in a frequency and store it, but this requires you to find a frequency first, THEN store it in the "Private" bank.

Anyway, for something you want to pop right out of the box and have work as advertised? Well . . .

Within minutes I was listening to a helicopter overhead ("What's the radar look like ... garble, garble"), picking up the local bus service ("She said she put a $20 bill in the box but I wasn't looking"), and hearing the local gendarmes being dispatched to quell a domestic dispute ("Subject is a white female, attempting to break into the house. Lots of shouting, both are unarmed"). I even picked up one of our neighbor's child monitors!

This really is best used while sitting down, rather than as a mobil unit; nonetheless, I dragged it into my car (hook up was trivial with included DC lighter plugin) and tooled down the rainy highways on a Monday, listening on the police band for reported accidents (I could make out about half a dozen).

From my reading, I know there are better scanners, but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the BC350C for other beginners like myself. Sit down and read the manual while you're playing with it, and you'll get the hang of things pretty quickly. If you've never listened to scanners, give yourself a little bit of time to develop an ear. I also recommend that you keep a pad and pencil nearby to jot down interesting frequencies you can usually look up on the Internet later (search for your state and the phrase "scanner frequencies").

You might move up and onward in scanner-dom, and this nifty little gadget is likely to just be your introductory toy to the exciting world of the electro-magnetic spectrum!

A good scanner with very good audio sound. The BC350C is a very good size for a table or desk.
It has limit search and every police,fire,air,cb band with plenty of freqency coverage. The Price is
also very good. the scanner doesn't have a keyboard to type in a frequency but, which is ok with
me. I like to scan,find, and store freguencies. If you want a keyboard and trunking another scanner
would be a better choice for you, but if you are a beginner , or just want a basic scanner for fun or
basic needs for a decent price this is a very good choice.

The majority of people out their who want to buy a scanner are those interested in what the police/Fire-Rescue are saying on their two way radio's. Police opperate on 800mhz and so an 800mhz scanner is necessary, so I bought one...
Well after buying the BC350C 800mhz scanner I read its owner manual and it states that the majority of police/Fire-Rescue etc. opperate an 800mhz Trunk system, and in order to properly tack the police etc. on 800mhz you need to buy a difrent scanner that is 800mhz Trunk capable...So basicly to fined this out it cost me over $100.00!!! Uniden BC350C 800 MHz Mobile Scanner
The package showed police/fire-rescue on it and the scanner itself has police and fire buttons indicating that it scanns 800mhz frequencies. The seller never indicated it was not trunk capable nor did the manufacturer Uniden untill later in their owners manual. Well it does scann 800mhz frequencies but it will not track the 800mhz Tunk system within 800mhz. "Trunk system basics: every time a officer transmits on a truck system he transmits and recieves on a diffrent frequency. in order to track what is being said a trunk system scanner is needed or you only hear a fragment of the conversation."
The scanner is easy to use but without trunk capabilities it might as well be a old scanner from the 80's. The scanner is very limited. I would not suggest buying one, don't wast your money. Buy a scanner that is trunk capable. Uniden Bearcat BCT8 BearTracker Warning System with 800 MHz TrunkTracker III

Does not support TrunkTracking, however I was unaware of what that was until I read about it in the manual.

Scanning larger bands takes time...I don't know if there's a faster scanner.

Deleting a saved channel is rather cumbersome, but doable if you're not on the road.

Antenna works well with home.

Would be nice if I could group my saved channels, but unfortunately, there is only one "Private" memory bank for the user.

This little scanner is not worth the price. It's got a very limited user interface making it very slow and aggravating to use. There is no possible way to directly input a specific frequency, large gaps in between the frequency ranges it's programmed to receive, and very limited memory capabilities. The small display is hard to read unless you are directly in front of the device, looking from any angle and the backlit LCD display is unreadable.

Reception of this scanner is poor on all of it's (very limited) bands, though can be improved with the use of an aftermarket antenna. The scanner is very prone to intermod from paging systems and other sources. The squelch is practically useless on this thing, it's either on or off, it seems that any setting in between full and open are pretty close to full, as it takes fairly strong signals to break the squelch even when it's set just above the static level on any empty frequency. The sound quality from the built-in speaker is tinny and shallow sounding, but at least there is a jack for an external speaker.

On the bright side, the chassis is well built and strong, the buttons have a decent feel, not to light nor too stiff. The knobs turn with ease, but will not change their settings due to road vibration, they stay put where you set them at. The fit and finish of the scanner is actually quite good overall, but it's not enough to make up for it's lacking feature set and poor performance.

We received this scanner earlier than expected. It arrived in complete working order. This is the easiest to set up and use of all I have checked out.

We purchased this scanner because it was recommended by our local law enforcement. This is the model they use in their patrol cars. We have been very pleased with it. I definitely recommend Amazon as the place to purchase it. They are very concerned about customer satisfaction and they ship FAST!!

this is my first scanner. from what i have learned it seems everyone starts out with this model or similar. its simple to use, it does not need to be technical unless you want to make it. i do recommend using the plastic copper core antenna to put on a window, as it got me a distance of 40 miles, the straight metal antenna was just good for local stuff. this is a product i could easily recommend to anyone that wants to hear new things and listen to the weather as it happens,
thank you,,

I purchased this scanner to listen solely to the air band in my area. It took about 15 minutes to set up the radio and program in the ten or so frequencies I needed. Reception was good. It was at first a little difficult to delete frequencies--essentially you have to overwrite a frequency you wish to delete--it's not as simple as deleting it. But no biggie, because once I have the frequencies I need in the radio, very little reason to change.

I have connected the scanner to a very simple AM/FM roof antenna, and now can hear jets 40-50 miles away as they pass through 24000 feet. So this scanner is excellent for what I need--just to pull in a few channels. It has no luxury functions, is just a robust, plain vanilla scanner.

I bought this scanner for my nephew.It arrived several days before the date specified. My nephew started it right away & was very happy with it!I highly recommend buying from this seller.