Looking to buy the Whistler WS1065 instead of the Uniden BCD536HP

CorwinScansNM · Nov 8, 2014

I am looking to possibly purchase the Whistler WS1065 Digital Scanner instead of the Uniden BCD536HP which I was considering before I looked at the WS1065. I want to get some insight & thoughts from others here before I convince myself to go for the WS1065 over the still outrageous Uniden BCD536HP Scanner that still does not have all of its advertised features released & some not so happy customer reviews that I have been reading lately on Amazon for the BCD536HP.

Also, I was wondering if the Whistler WS1065 Digital Scanner will later on down the road, have the capability to switch to Phase II with a simple software upgrade to get this advanced feature that I am sure will soon be needed in my county being that they are already using P25 phase 1? I did not see or read anywhere that it can currently decode or pick up P25 phase II systems.

pepsima1 · Nov 8, 2014

CorwinScansNM said:
I am looking to possibly purchase the Whistler WS1065 Digital Scanner instead of the Uniden BCD536HP which I was considering before I looked at the WS1065. I want to get some insight & thoughts from others here before I convince myself to go for the WS1065 over the still outrageous Uniden BCD536HP Scanner that still does not have all of its advertised features released & some not so happy customer reviews that I have been reading lately on Amazon for the BCD536HP.

Also, I was wondering if the Whistler WS1065 Digital Scanner will later on down the road, have the capability to switch to Phase II with a simple software upgrade to get this advanced feature that I am sure will soon be needed in my county being that they are already using P25 phase 1? I did not see or read anywhere that it can currently decode or pick up P25 phase II systems.

The Whistler 1065 scanner is a bad a** radio. What I like about the radio is the digital decode is the best out there on the market. You will hear no choppy-ness or loss of conversation at all.

It will blow any of the Uniden radios away hands down but its a give and take situation. Uniden has some feature that the Whistler does not have when it comes to programming and the architecture setup.

I use several other Uniden radios for VHF-low band and for airband because Uniden is better. Whistler is a little weaker on low-band.

Hands down digital P25 is the best. I can say pretty much that this radio will only be-able to decode

Phase I NOT Phase II at all.

hiegtx · Nov 8, 2014

CorwinScansNM said:
I am looking to possibly purchase the Whistler WS1065 Digital Scanner instead of the Uniden BCD536HP which I was considering before I looked at the WS1065. I want to get some insight & thoughts from others here before I convince myself to go for the WS1065 over the still outrageous Uniden BCD536HP Scanner that still does not have all of its advertised features released & some not so happy customer reviews that I have been reading lately on Amazon for the BCD536HP.

Also, I was wondering if the Whistler WS1065 Digital Scanner will later on down the road, have the capability to switch to Phase II with a simple software upgrade to get this advanced feature that I am sure will soon be needed in my county being that they are already using P25 phase 1? I did not see or read anywhere that it can currently decode or pick up P25 phase II systems.

The WS1065 would not be capable of Phase II operation. It's basically a re-release of the PSR-600, or the Radio Shack labeled equivalent Pro-197. It would not have the internal hardware to do Phase II, so a firmware upgrade for that would not be possible. The current Whistler scanner that will do P25 Phase II is the WS1080, but that's a hand-held (portable) model.

Whistler has announced intentions to release the WS1095, which will be a base/mobile sibling to the WS1080, capable of P25 Phase II, and with a detachable faceplate (in effect, a remote head). Several threads in the forum on it, including this one. This the same basic scanner that GRE, before they shut down, had announced as the PSR-900, but it was never released by them.

Despite all the negative comments on the 536HP, coming largely from the same group in multiple threads, my 536 has not had major problems. It was one that was included in the headphone recall, which was handled promptly, but other than one incident with the memory card, which I probably caused myself, it has been trouble free. It performs well on my local systems, including a couple of Phase II systems. There is another large suburban system that will shift to Phase II by the first half of next year. While I am disappointed that the analyze features are not yet available, and understand the frustration of those that were counting on the Siren app to control the scanner remotely, it does work as a digital scanner, on the systems specified. While I also agree that the situation with the unreleased features could have been handled better, it's apparent that there are deeper problems in getting these to work than Uniden anticipated. This seems to especially be the case with the Siren app, in that the WiFi dongle Uniden chose is not communication well with the scanner. Hopefully, these issues will be resolved, the sooner the better.

pepsima1 · Nov 8, 2014

hiegtx said:
The WS1065 would not be capable of Phase II operation. It's basically a re-release of the PSR-600, or the Radio Shack labeled equivalent Pro-197. It would not have the internal hardware to do Phase II, so a firmware upgrade for that would not be possible. The current Whistler scanner that will do P25 Phase II is the WS1080, but that's a hand-held (portable) model.

Whistler has announced intentions to release the WS1095, which will be a base/mobile sibling to the WS1080, capable of P25 Phase II, and with a detachable faceplate (in effect, a remote head). Several threads in the forum on it, including this one. This the same basic scanner that GRE, before they shut down, had announced as the PSR-900, but it was never released by them.

Despite all the negative comments on the 536HP, coming largely from the same group in multiple threads, my 536 has not had major problems. It was one that was included in the headphone recall, which was handled promptly, but other than one incident with the memory card, which I probably caused myself, it has been trouble free. It performs well on my local systems, including a couple of Phase II systems. There is another large suburban system that will shift to Phase II by the first half of next year. While I am disappointed that the analyze features are not yet available, and understand the frustration of those that were counting on the Siren app to control the scanner remotely, it does work as a digital scanner, on the systems specified. While I also agree that the situation with the unreleased features could have been handled better, it's apparent that there are deeper problems in getting these to work than Uniden anticipated. This seems to especially be the case with the Siren app, in that the WiFi dongle Uniden chose is not communication well with the scanner. Hopefully, these issues will be resolved, the sooner the better.

I bought the 536hp with the headphone jack issue too and it got resolved but there are still more issues with the rear speaker port for sure. I am not going to do any bashing but state the facts.

Last week I decided to buy another 536hp from Amazon since I can return it in 90 days without any hassles. The radio does work really well and does have some good features but on the trunking system I listen too the P25 audio is still choppy as to my Whistler WS-1065 does not have any issues at all. Its perfect.

So after a year long I was really hoping that Uniden decided to listen and dig into the radio and fix the hardware issues with the rear speaker port. They DID NOT> STILL THE SAME ISSUE with regards to the pulse sounds. I am using a very nice Yaseu Vertex MLS-100 speaker.

I am still pretty dis-appointed as they are still pumping out these radios with hardware related issues. I am just calling as it is.

Attached is the audio that comes out of the rear speaker when its scanning a conventional or trunking scanlist. Its completely horrible.

This is the serial number of the radio too. 375Z48003894

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ikk7ba1fe8y0fi3/Uniden Rear Speaker Port.m4a?dl=0

cm · Nov 8, 2014

pepsima1 said:
I bought the 536hp with the headphone jack issue too and it got resolved but there are still more issues with the rear speaker port for sure. I am not going to do any bashing but state the facts.

Last week I decided to buy another 536hp from Amazon since I can return it in 90 days without any hassles. The radio does work really well and does have some good features but on the trunking system I listen too the P25 audio is still choppy as to my Whistler WS-1065 does not have any issues at all. Its perfect.

So after a year long I was really hoping that Uniden decided to listen and dig into the radio and fix the hardware issues with the rear speaker port. They DID NOT> STILL THE SAME ISSUE with regards to the pulse sounds. I am using a very nice Yaseu Vertex MLS-100 speaker.

I am still pretty dis-appointed as they are still pumping out these radios with hardware related issues. I am just calling as it is.

Attached is the audio that comes out of the rear speaker when its scanning a conventional or trunking scanlist. Its completely horrible.

This is the serial number of the radio too. 375Z48003894

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ikk7ba1fe8y0fi3/Uniden Rear Speaker Port.m4a?dl=0

Have you checked with Uniden to see if you can send it back?

pepsima1 · Nov 8, 2014

cm said:
Have you checked with Uniden to see if you can send it back?

Shipping the radio to Uniden is not the fix for me. Amazon will be the return point for a full refund before January 31st. Just keep it for a while and see what the future may hold. If no resolution within the next couple of months then I will get my money back and see what other competitors have on their plate.

Enough is enough. I thought I would give them one more chance. The rear port was an issue since day one too. This is not an isolated incident. You have to rebuild the foundation before you can build the house. O well.

I just want to make sure that buyers beware before they drop 600 bucks for a radio.

pepsima1 · Nov 8, 2014

The price on those Uniden BCD536HP on Amazon right now are 517.00

Crazy. That's a great Price.

SCPD · Nov 8, 2014

Myself I am waiting for the WS-1095. That is going to be a very nice radio .. but I am going to use it as a base unit not mobile.

The record features are a major plus for me .. and is why I am going to wait. Besides I have been using the PSR800 and it is a very nice radio.

I just figure as long as the hardware is there for Phase II TDMA .. they can always upgrade it later to add improvements. And that means a much more selective group of scanners in that list. From what I am hearing on these forums .. the GRE/Whistler radios out perform the Uniden scanners on P25. And for me .. it is 90% about performance. The rest is a bonus.

pepsima1 · Nov 8, 2014

Ordered that 536HP last week and just called Amazon since the price has really dropped. They just gave me a 60.00 credit to my account and they even took off the shipping charges. Love Amazon.

Looks like the WS-1095 is not going to be released until maybe the first of the year. Hopefully not. Maybe a week or two before Christmas would be awesome. Whistler is just so tight lipped about things which is a good thing. But looking forward to the radio coming out.

cherubim · Nov 8, 2014

Getting back to the OPs question, I have both the GRE PSR-600 and a RS Pro-197 which are both functionally identical to the Whistler WS-1065 (and RS Pro-652). I use both of them exclusively for monitoring a large statewide P25 trunking system. The sensitivity, digital demodulation performance and recovered audio on these scanners is outstanding. The only negative issue with these scanners is the presence of front-end signal overload that manifests itself in the airband and VHF-Hi band. Using the attenuator or an FM-trap may help to mitigate this problem. Of course, depending on your location you might not experience this issue.

As stated by another poster, these scanners cannot be firmware upgraded to demodulate P25 Phase II TDMA.

Voyager · Nov 8, 2014

pepsima1 said:
So after a year long I was really hoping that Uniden decided to listen and dig into the radio and fix the hardware issues with the rear speaker port. They DID NOT> STILL THE SAME ISSUE with regards to the pulse sounds. I am using a very nice Yaseu Vertex MLS-100 speaker.

I think it's safe to say Uniden's firmware engineers have had other priorities at the moment.

Jay911 · Nov 8, 2014

The one thing I will say about the PSR-500/600 (and all the RS/Whistler derivatives, whatever their model numbers are) is that they cannot handle multi-site trunking at all, especially if you have more than 32 control channels in a system. There is no provision for more than one site per system. If you have fewer than 33 control channels, you can probably get away with putting them all in one system/TSYS. But a system in my neck of the woods has 187 unique CCs. I'd need to put this system in my 500 or 600 in six duplicate TSYSes (and having to maintain the talkgroups etc in sync across all 6) in order to be sure I could get coverage in all areas the system covers.
The PSR-800 and its derivatives do handle multi-site "properly", at least as far as a scanner can (no scanner takes site numbers/identifiers into consideration, so at this stage in the game, you could be showing that you're monitoring site 1 and actually be on site 17, if they both share control channel frequencies). In fact IMO the PSR-800 handles multi-site operation better than Uniden; GRE seems to approach it more like a professional radio does, sampling all the available CCs and choosing the strongest one, whereas Uniden will simply connect to any site they can get good decode on (and in some of the older models, if you got decode on a weaker CC "early" in your frequency list, any other CCs would be ignored, even if they were stronger).

fxdscon · Nov 8, 2014

pepsima1 said:
Whistler is just so tight lipped about things which is a good thing.

But yet you have condemned Uniden/UPMan over and over and over again for being tight lipped about their products and developments.

Or are you going to tell us now that you have never done that?

CorwinScansNM said:
Also, I was wondering if the Whistler WS1065 Digital Scanner will later on down the road, have the capability to switch to Phase II with a simple software upgrade to get this advanced feature that I am sure will soon be needed in my county being that they are already using P25 phase 1? I did not see or read anywhere that it can currently decode or pick up P25 phase II systems.

As others have mentioned, the hardware doesn't exist in the WS1065 for phase 2, so a firmware update would not be capable of that.

.

.

bama9999 · Nov 8, 2014

pepsima1 said:
I bought the 536hp with the headphone jack issue too and it got resolved but there are still more issues with the rear speaker port for sure. I am not going to do any bashing but state the facts.

Last week I decided to buy another 536hp from Amazon since I can return it in 90 days without any hassles. The radio does work really well and does have some good features but on the trunking system I listen too the P25 audio is still choppy as to my Whistler WS-1065 does not have any issues at all. Its perfect.

So after a year long I was really hoping that Uniden decided to listen and dig into the radio and fix the hardware issues with the rear speaker port. They DID NOT> STILL THE SAME ISSUE with regards to the pulse sounds. I am using a very nice Yaseu Vertex MLS-100 speaker.

I am still pretty dis-appointed as they are still pumping out these radios with hardware related issues. I am just calling as it is.

Attached is the audio that comes out of the rear speaker when its scanning a conventional or trunking scanlist. Its completely horrible.

This is the serial number of the radio too. 375Z48003894

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ikk7ba1fe8y0fi3/Uniden Rear Speaker Port.m4a?dl=0

Have you tried a different speaker? I have no issues at all when using an external speaker on my 536, and I've used three different ones on it.

SCPD · Nov 8, 2014

Jay911 said:
The PSR-800 and its derivatives do handle multi-site "properly", at least as far as a scanner can ....

So Jay .. if I read this right, this list of "proper radios" would include the following ?

PSR800 / WS-1080 and WS-1095

W6KRU · Nov 8, 2014

The WS-1065 is tempting because I know it will work great on the simulcast Moto II system I listen to. My PSR-500 sounds almost as good as my WS-1080. I'm going to wait on the WS-1095 though so I'll have Phase II covered in the future.

I tried the 436HP but the audio is almost as bad as my 396s so Whistler is getting the nod.

Jay911 · Nov 8, 2014

edmscan said:
So Jay .. if I read this right, this list of "proper radios" would include the following ?

PSR800 / WS-1080 and WS-1095

If those are the Whistler model numbers for the PSR-800, then yes.. as I said, of all scanners, that one gets multi-site trunking done as close to the way a pro radio does as possible.

stingray327 · Nov 9, 2014

pepsima1 said:
I bought the 536hp with the headphone jack issue too and it got resolved but there are still more issues with the rear speaker port for sure. I am not going to do any bashing but state the facts.

Last week I decided to buy another 536hp from Amazon since I can return it in 90 days without any hassles. The radio does work really well and does have some good features but on the trunking system I listen too the P25 audio is still choppy as to my Whistler WS-1065 does not have any issues at all. Its perfect.

So after a year long I was really hoping that Uniden decided to listen and dig into the radio and fix the hardware issues with the rear speaker port. They DID NOT> STILL THE SAME ISSUE with regards to the pulse sounds. I am using a very nice Yaseu Vertex MLS-100 speaker.

I am still pretty dis-appointed as they are still pumping out these radios with hardware related issues. I am just calling as it is.

Attached is the audio that comes out of the rear speaker when its scanning a conventional or trunking scanlist. Its completely horrible.

This is the serial number of the radio too. 375Z48003894

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ikk7ba1fe8y0fi3/Uniden Rear Speaker Port.m4a?dl=0

I wish I could remember but there is a scanner company like Scanner Master or Scanner World not sure who but it will let you send scanner back for refund within 30 days if you are not satisfied with it.

stingray327 · Nov 9, 2014

pepsima1 said:
The price on those Uniden BCD536HP on Amazon right now are 517.00

Crazy. That's a great Price.

Are the Whistlers scanners on sale at Amazon and at a good price?

CorwinScansNM · Nov 10, 2014

Re: Looks like the WS-1095

pepsima1 said:
Looks like the WS-1095 is not going to be released until maybe the first of the year. Hopefully not. Maybe a week or two before Christmas would be awesome. Whistler is just so tight lipped about things which is a good thing. But looking forward to the radio coming out.

That is great news hearing about some competition coming soon to compete with the new Uniden BCD536HP Digital Scanner. Uniden definitely needs to have another scanner competitor to make them try harder for better built quality scanners...
I was not aware of a new scanner coming out by Whistler until you told me here. I will be waiting for it to release instead of purchasing the older WS1065 now knowing from all of the answers posted here to my question about the P25 phase II capability feature which I now know is not capable on the WS1065 but will be on the new Whistler WS1095.

Are there any words or rumors of what the price will run on the new Whistler WS1095 when it is available?

Looking to buy the Whistler WS1065 instead of the Uniden BCD536HP

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