I have to chuckle a bit at some reviewers saying this is too hard to program. If you can enter numbers and press one key, that's all the skill needed to program a frequency into the scanner. The main problem with a lot of the unhappy people is they don't go to RadioReference and check the types of radio systems used in their areas. Some areas have gone to trunked systems, digital transmissions, and some are encrypted, which no scanner can monitor. You can still monitor most trunked or digital unencrypted transmissions but not with this scanner. If your area has analog trunked systems or digital trunked systems, just be prepared to pay anywhere from $200 to $600, the higher price for the most capable digital scanners. The easy way to see if this scanner will work for you is to take a look at RadioReference.com for the frequencies used in your area. If most are in a range from 700 to 900 MHz, this is not the radio for you.
This radio is a combination of a clock radio, commercial FM broadcast receiver, weather channels, and analog VHF/UHF scanner. I got mine on an Amazon special for $69.31 because it was a return by one of those people who can't read a simple manual. Their loss, my gain. Everything was in the box, and some of the components were still sealed in the factory plastic. As usual, the Amazon "seconds" are a great buy.
The radio itself is fairly lightweight but seems well built. It's a handsome black plastic and looks more like a bedside clock radio than a scanner. Don't let the looks fool you though. This is a very capable radio that will monitor any analog frequency from 25 to 512 MHz. It even includes the VHF and UHF airband, a rarity in a scanner in this price range. The included telescopic antenna is unobtrusive and is sufficient for local monitoring. It's quite a sensitive radio and, although I haven't attached an outdoor antenna, I suspect it may get overloaded in an urban area. You can search all the frequencies in the scanners range and easily save new frequencies found.
The downsides as strictly a scanner are no tones and no tags. Tones can sort out multiple agencies on the same frequency so you only hear the one you want. Tags allow you apply an alphanumeric tag to a channel. If you only want to monitor 20 or 30 channels you can memorize the frequencies. No one can do that with 500 channels. You can organize frequencies in 10 banks of 50 to help by only having only one agency per bank, but this is really not the scanner you want if you're going to be listening to hundreds of frequencies.
The FM section of the radio works fine. Plenty of sensitivity and the sound from the built-in speaker is decent. Not hifi, but okay for a clock radio. and plenty of volume. There's a jack in the back if you want use a better speaker. I tried it with a pair of powered computer speakers. The tone and fidelity is actually quite good.
The weather section is pretty basic. The channels are preprogrammed and you use the arrow keys to scroll through them. Except in rare cases, the clearest channel covers your area. There are no complicated tones to set for an alert. When the radio is in clock mode it is constantly monitoring all the weather channels. A warning from the NWS sets off a loud tone. The downside is the radio is sensitive enough it may pick up an alert on a channel that's fairly far away. I pick up stations 50 miles away with the standard antenna. There haven't been any alerts sent yet so I don't know how realistic a problem that may be. The main thing is this radio will wake you up if there's a warning, and that's one of the reasons I bought this radio. I live in an area with a fair number of tornadoes, and a lot come at night.[Edit - 1/3/2018. After reading further in the manual, the weather alert only monitors the last weather frequency you listened to. Make sure to use the frequency that covers your before you go back to the scanner or FM radio. The scanner then only monitors the local weather frequency. There's no issue with picking up an alert from further away.]
This is a great scanner for the price if live in an area that still has analog conventional public safety channels, but it's also great radio if you're an aviation enthusiast or railfan. You can even listen to CB chatter, good buddy. :-)
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