In answer to the original question...
I have used the 436 for years and in my view it's the best scanner for the Phoenix area, because it will simply not play as much "simulcast garbage" as other scanners will, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper than an SDS100 and in my view is just as good in 90% of situations. From what I have seen in testing of my own and along side others, the SDS100 was full of issues and has weak 700 MHz reception, and did the worst job on the 800 MHz MCSO Smartzone system that I've seen out of any digital scanner ever made. If you want one device for a reasonable price that "does it all", I would consider the BCD436HP, or a used PSR-800 / PRO-668. If you mainly care about P25 700MHz simulcast, there is no comparison to the Unication G4/5 in terms of reception / decoding simulcast, but these are pagers, and you will want to do some reading in the Unication forum to understand the limitations and workarounds before buying one. The Unication is truly a different animal from scanners, but with some creative programming it serves well for many in the valley, myself included.
Unication aside, let me say one thing about true scanners monitoring simulcast systems. The main factor in how well one works for you will be location, location, and then, location. I can literally drive you around Phoenix and show you specific locations where ANY digital scanner, even the ones produced 14-15 years ago, will work flawlessly, and sound beautiful. I can then drive you a block away where it all falls apart. It's THAT location-specific. Predicting how well any given scanner will work in your location is absolutely impossible, and you will have to experiment around to find out. You MAY, find that a 15 year old PSR-500 will work perfectly where you are for what you want to hear. You may also find that NO scanner will work correctly on simulcast where you want it to work, in which case the Unication will be your only option. This is all speaking to stationary reception.
When driving around in a car it goes like this: All scanners aside from the SDS100 are awful most of the time. With the SDS100, if you have one or more sites nearby, you can do OK much of the time, but simulcast range is pitiful, so you need to be fairly close to a tower, and you can usually forget about monitoring distant simulcasts while moving (and even when stationary). Keep in mind that many people including myself have also found the SDS100 to be quite susceptible to interference, causing the unit to avoid switching from control channel to the voice frequency (meaning you don't hear people talking, the unit just hangs). The Unication G4/5 will work well stationary, moving, wherever you are, and reception on distant simulcast systems is in another universe compared to any scanner, but again, it's a PAGER, and you must understand the limitations and workarounds before purchasing one.
