Customer Reviews

Uniden BCT15 BearTracker Mobile Tracking Scanner with GPS Support (Black)

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

 

 

I've owned scanners for the last 30 years. This is by far the best one I've ever had. It's incredibly powerful. I purchased it for my home as I've got a handheld BCT-245 in my truck. It's reception is so much better than the BCT-245 I'm going to buy another one of these for my truck.

Don't try to manually program it. Get some software off the internet (I use ARC, which interfaces with an online site) and in just a few minutes you're all programmed and ready to go!

I just recently upgraded my 3 other uniden scanners. I really like the BCT15 but it is somewhat complicated. So of course I needed to buy the director software that makes programming easier thru your computer. The uniden web site I felt was misleading because what I ended up buying was a registration key... not software for $29 dollars. You have to download the software then use the key. Well to this day I have not been able to download it. (Vista) I emailed uniden customer support (which takes them 3 days to respond) so that game went on for awhile. I then was on the phone for over a hour trying for a refund! Which they will not do because they are not sure whether you did download or not! When customer service finally put a guy named Josh on the phone and he told me he would burn me a disk and send it out right away I was happy. The disk never came and they claim they know no Josh. Nightmare.... say the least!

I bought the BCT 15 and after about 4 months intermittent use the backlight display would not turn on. I returned the unit for repair twice and it was returned with the same problem. I tried calling their repair line and waited at least 45 minutes on hold and when I finally reached someone he told me someone would call me back, which never happened.

I am left with a defective unit, under warranty and no access to service. This is the poorest example of customer service I have ever experienced.

This is my first scanner. I got it to monitor traffic on a Motorola Type II system mixed with some APCO 25. I've managed to program in the channels (talk ID's) I need, but this scanner is way over my head. I'm not able to maintain continuity with a specific channel because it keeps scanning the entire channel bank. I realize that this is the purpose of a scanner, but I'm unable to follow traffic in a logical order. This is not the fault of the scanner, it's because I'm a novice and I suspect because of the system I'm trying to listen in on. Hence the 4 stars: Uniden really should put a little more effort into the manual. There are so many alerts to set on this thing that it took me 3 days to figure out and unprogram the alerts which were interfering with traffic. Now, in a perfect scenario, I would appreciate the Beartracker, etc. Someday. Meanwhile, I have great admiration for this scanner but am on a steep learning curve.

I purchased this scanner to replace my Radio Shack Pro-95 Trucking scanner. I have to say that the dynamic memory allocation protocol that this scanner uses is truly an innovation that has been needed for a long time in the world of scanners. For those that don't know what this is, this scanner doesn't use Channels and Banks like most other scanners. It instead divides the "Space" on the scanner up into whatever size chunks that you need to fit your local systems. What you create is Systems that are made up of whatever Groups of Frequencies you want. The only restriction is that you can only have one kind of frequencies in a system, Trucked or Conventional, and you can only have one trunk type in a system.

This might make perfect sense to you, but actually programming them into the scanner through the button interface on the front is a bit difficult. Most of the input is preformed with the large Button/Knob on the right side of the scanner. It works something like a computer mouse. You turn the knob to highlight your selection on the large display, and then you press in on the button to select the highlighted item. Since you can program in thousands of individual items you can imagine that this can be very tedious.

Uniden makes a software application that can be used to program the scanner by using your home computer and the supplied cable. There are also several others available that can also do the job. But here is why I only gave this scanner 3 stars, the Uniden software is an additional purchase. It's not that expensive, but after paying over $200 for a top end scanner you would at last think that a basic program to set it up would be available without an additional charge. I do have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised to see that the programming cable was included with the scanner.

The program is available through the Uniden site after you register the scanner on the site. But as far as programs go this is not something to shout about. It's very simple and only offers basic manual programming and remote monitoring. There are several programs on the internet for similar prices that do far more, not the least of which is automatically downloading frequency and trucking information that you can then upload to the scanner.

Even with this shortcoming, I would still recommend this scanner for someone that is serious about listening in on what's going on around them.

Pros: solidly built (not cheap plastic), good audio, plenty of memory, excellent display, very sensitive.

Cons: Poorly written manual, included programming cable is serial instead of USB, no software included.

Other thoughts: Don't even think of programming this unit manually (Freescan works fine and costs nothing, just search the web for it). Programming and even using this scanner may present a bit of a learning curve for some, so be prepared to do some homework.

Bottom line: This is a great product that is a lot of fun to own.

I have owned scanners for 30 years or more,by far this is the best.
This scanner has features that I cannot use here in Bermuda, but has many that I can.
Thank you Uniden for a fantastic scanner......


Henry Whitter