I have that one myself, the first one I ever bought, and 20 years later it's still kicking. It was definitely one of the first - if not THE first - SAME radios. Basically as Mark said, the main thing it's lacking is EOM detection, so it runs for 5 minutes after an alert, instead of turning off.. The next version of that (12-250) did have EOM. The 249 also only has the 'core' set of event codes. It will not respond to the 'extended' set like Amber alerts, "shelter in place" warnings, 911 outage notices, etc because they weren't standardized yet when this radio was manufactured..
Besides that, the feature set hasn't really changed up to today's models.. And the newer features tend to be gimmicky or merely for ease of programming (like the ability to program by state>county name versus having to look up FIPS codes)