"Best" handheld LE/FD scanner for Phoenix area?

[W7IBW]

Hello. I'm kind of new to the digital scanning world. I work for a local TV station and am looking at getting a handheld scanner to hear the local Law Enforcement and Fire agencies. I've been looking at the PSR-800 and BCD396XT. Without getting into a huge debate on "which is best", I'm more just wondering if either one is better for just the purpose of monitoring our local Law Enforcement and Fire agencies? Or, is there another model of handheld that's better? It seems these two are pretty similar in capability and price, but just thought I'd check with some local users first. Thanks so much for any input!
-J.R.

 

[ICP963]

Going on my own experience with the 996XT, I like the way you can assign quick keys to any talkgroup or frequency. It makes it MUCH quicker to get to a specific channel in a hurry. For example, I have the Phoenix Fire A Deck channels in bank 2, so to get to A deck 5 all I have to do is put the scanner in HOLD mode and then hit [2][.]{5][Menu] and the radio tunes to 153.830. If I want to go to K Deck 8 (bank 3 in my 996XT) I go to [3][.]{8][Menu] and the scanner goes to the Phoenix RWC system control channel and looks for talkgroup 1613. Works well for me.

Not sure if the GRE's have this feature.

 

[brianearlspilner]

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Play with them both. See which one is easy for you. I have a PSR 500. Easy to program by hand especially if u use the easy to read instruction manual.