Anyone seen the XL-95 in the wild yet

[officerdave]

Talked to sales, getting some XL-95s in for demo. ( ok maybe ) Anyone been able to run one yet ?

 

[mmckenna]

Have not.
These sort of things are usually released at IWCE or similar conferences/trade shows. Since IWCE has been pushed back to September, the public releases for many new radios has been messed up.

 

[kb4cvn]

I just looked at Harris TechLink. The XL-95 looks like a down-featured XL-200.

Kinda like the LPE-50 was to the LPE-200, and the P5100 was to the P7100. Same exact radio. Different label, and very limited available feature set. (IE: No encryption or max systems/groups).

 

[TDR-94]

Or a less expensive alternative to the XL-185P.

 

[rjschilder]

I just looked at Harris TechLink. The XL-95 looks like a down-featured XL-200.

Kinda like the LPE-50 was to the LPE-200, and the P5100 was to the P7100. Same exact radio. Different label, and very limited available feature set. (IE: No encryption or max systems/groups).

It has encryption, I've personally used one. 7/800mhz only for now.

 

[wa8pyr]

Have not.
These sort of things are usually released at IWCE or similar conferences/trade shows. Since IWCE has been pushed back to September, the public releases for many new radios has been messed up.

A couple of sites I've visited which have FCC test reports shows September 7, 2021 as the release date. Since IWCE is September 27-30, that fits nicely.

Kinda like the LPE-50 was to the LPE-200, and the P5100 was to the P7100. Same exact radio. Different label, and very limited available feature set. (IE: No encryption or max systems/groups).

The brochure does show encryption available. My guess is 512 max system/group capacity, like the XG15 (kind of an XG25 Lite as the XG25 is the XG75 Lite).

 

[sbk1982]

The XL-95 is the guts of an XL portable inside the body of an XG-75. Still uses the same XG battery and XG speaker mic. System keypad is upgraded to a new configuration to work better with navigating the XL menu options. I believe the XL-95 also has bluetooth which was only available in the XG-25 series previously. I do not believe the LTE capability of the XL-185/200 portables will exist in the XL-95.

The radio is capable of P25 and EDACS plus conventional modes.

This is a budget friendly solution for XG portable radios that are due for upgrade/replacement without having to purchase all new accessories.

 

[KG7PBS]

I just looked at Harris TechLink. The XL-95 looks like a down-featured XL-200.

Kinda like the LPE-50 was to the LPE-200, and the P5100 was to the P7100. Same exact radio. Different label, and very limited available feature set. (IE: No encryption or max systems/groups).

wrong the XL-95P will do AES-256 Encryption. It says it in there brochure

 

[TDR-94]

Mark wasn't specifically referring to the XL-95P. He was using encryption as an example of a feature limited version of a P7100 (ie: the less costly P5100 had no encryption capability and was limited to 128 SYS/GRPS).

 

[KK6ZTE]

The XL-95 is the guts of an XL portable inside the body of an XG-75. Still uses the same XG battery and XG speaker mic. System keypad is upgraded to a new configuration to work better with navigating the XL menu options. I believe the XL-95 also has bluetooth which was only available in the XG-25 series previously. I do not believe the LTE capability of the XL-185/200 portables will exist in the XL-95.

The radio is capable of P25 and EDACS plus conventional modes.

This is a budget friendly solution for XG portable radios that are due for upgrade/replacement without having to purchase all new accessories.

It's not significantly cheaper than the XL185 per my manager. We were interested for a few microseconds.

 

[mmckenna]

I had one in my hand today. Looked like a nice basic radio. I heard $1000 range.

 

[BlackhatTaylor]

Hi guys- long time lingerer and first time poster.

im on the hook to technically evaluate this radio for my employer before a large purchasr- and I thought I would drop my 2 pennies after my findings today.

#1 - Harris doesn’t have a operator or maintenance manual for this device on pspc, you can find the white papers and sales material, but I haven’t found the manual for the radio. Anywhere.

#2 - RPM-2 doesn’t seem to have the oddities of this new model radio worked out in the programming software. For example, on the 200/185/150 there is a 2 way switch behind the volume knob that can be used to enable/disable encryption, or in our case lock/unlock the radio.You can program the keypad to lock the radio, but there is no option in the radio to unlock. Also, the 95 has 3 buttons on the side, a ptt and two option buttons, I could not program these, forcing me to make one of the 3 option buttons the button to select what zone/system you’re in. There’s a few more small things I found in RPM2 that didn’t line up with the radio - you could tell that there wasn’t a whole lot of testing before fielding.

with RPM-2 use caution on going to the bleeding edge firmware revision as the software release notes identify that upgrading rpm2 to current will make it incompatible with radios x version or below.

#3 audio playback - one of the cornerstones of features for the 200, does not work correctly. The radio I was using would only play the first call the radio received. I did validate that you could navigate to the menus/calls/playback and the newer calls were being recorded - but with no way to put this in the front end, the feature is useless.

#4 noise canceling - Harris has this down, and I validated with music so loud I couldn’t hear myself talking, the call was clear, you couldn’t even hear the music in the background.

Conclusion - When the bugs are ironed out, this has the potential to be my favorite Harris radio. The size of the xg-75 and the feature rich capability of the xl-200 make this radio a potential gem, but the evidence of a rushed deployment have me pulling on the reigns. When a few versions of firmware are deployed to iron out the turbulence, this radio will hum. As I write this, I have had no success updating firmware on any radio by any other process other than 1 radio at a time, 15 minutes per unit. Take this process and multiply it by the amount of releases it’s going to take Harris to get it right and you have a lot of repeat work.

 

[signal703]

#3, push and hold the audio playback button to re-set the buffer.

 

[BlackhatTaylor]

#3, push and hold the audio playback button to re-set the buffer.

It does reset, just to get locked again on the 1st call in the buffer.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[signal703]

that's how all the XL series portable work. The quick key traps the last audio heard for repeated playback, such as a phone number, door code, etc. If you want the other calls, you have to get them from the calls menu.

 

[BlackhatTaylor]

The last call isn't repeated, the first call is, and it isn't updated unless you clear the buffer. You can go to the menu and get all the calls like you mentioned.

I took the exact personality I put into the XL-95 and programmed it into my XL-200 and the last call is repeated, as advertised.

 

[dypstick]

There is a keypad sequence to unlock the radio. I don't have my 95 here to confirm, but I think it is Left Right Up Down on the arrow keys.