I am not disappointed in it as a monitor at all. In fact it fits right into how I monitor. I am usually focused on one dispatch channel, although it does monitor up to 64 TGIDs which is more than I have programmed for any system. I cannot understand how many people can scan and listen to multiple agencies and dozens of channels at one time. You miss a lot! I monitor 2 agency's dispatch. Highway Patrol and county SO. If there is an incident I am interested in, I follow it to other channels or other systems.It's important to remember, that the Unication pagers were built and designed for "first responders" needing a reliable pager with the features they needed. I've talked to probably 20 or so people that carry these day in and day out and even done some programming for then on occasion and none to date have expressed any "faults" in the pager for what they use it for.
I recently sold a G4 and amplified charger to a younger fellow on a volunteer department in NC actually and he's elated with how it works. He's found absolutely no faults with it and carry's it daily.
It seems to me that at least mostly, all of the shortcomings of the pager are from people that are trying to use it as a scanning device and not its intended design purpose. (at least from what I've read here on rr). I knew exactly what I was getting when I bought all my pagers, had done tons and tons of research on them and honestly for what I use them for, (monitoring a very busy simulcast system here in IL) it's better than anything else I tested it against and to that end, much better.
Would some of the things mentioned be nice? Sure they would I'll not deny that, but I don't think we're going to see many production changes to satisfy want we want in the scanning world vs what true first responders need and use daily in their line of business. I at least am not holding my breath
I did not notice the high/med/low until I started scrutinizing BT earbuds. It is sort of subtle, but there. I looked for something I may have changed. Did not find anything. I reset the pager to factory, downloaded a new profile and programmed in just one NOAA frequency for testing. Still just high/med/low.
This would be interesting. I know I use Motorola HT's with Bluetooth, and I finally got tired of messing with this, that and the other plus I wanted the PTT on the head piece so I didn't have to grab the radio. I finally upped the money for the Motorola one and never looked back. Although it has a small mic boom on it, I may try and pair it to the G5 and see what happens.
No you have to know exactly what you're getting and what it does. The 150 wasn't out yet and even today I don't know anyone locally that has one but I can tell you, the SDS 100 faired pretty poorly against the G5 when I had it for several weeks doing my testing. Plus the ease of carrying the G5 over larger hand held's is awesome.
Even monitoring one system, and about 20 different "active" things I know I miss stuff. 95% of our stuff here is on the county Simulcast so one system isn't the problem, it's all that's on that system. I do occasionally find myself locking things out and or firing up the 2nd G5 and locking it on something while the other one scans. Honestly prior to selling the G4 there were nights I had it on also during some higher profile pursuits just to try and catch everything. Not long ago we had a police officer get shot, and I had all three on plus was listening to some analog stuff on my outside radio on one of my ham radios on VHF and UHF for the stuff coming out there. Never enough radios LOL.
The Unication BT is not very expensive. I only objected to the size. I will order one soon from Ray. His shipping price is very reasonable. Unication is charging tariff fees. Ridiculous.
I definately like the size of the G5. I can easily operate it one handed. I also don't feel like it will fall apart if I dropped it on concrete. The reception clarity is what I would expect from a Motorola HT. The SDS100 only gets used for Simulcast. Now that I have G5, it only gets turned when there is an incident I want to follow involving multiple agencies. For analog and non LSM, the BCD325P2 gets used. It has far better audio than the SDS100 and beats it on anything not LSM.
So the same exact behavior?
Yes.
. I'm using a hard leather case with a swivel and I didn't get the swivel positioned right. It dropped from waist high on to the asphalt, and survived just fine.I use mine in the car and when listening to simulcast sites. I have a tower about a mile away from me that isn't simulcast, so I use my TRX-1 for listening at home. I use Unitrunker for finding new talkgroups.
What I observed was 0-30 is low, 35-60 is medium, 65-100 is high volume.
I found Aftershokz to be the best. List price is around $150, but occasionally on sale at Amazon for $70 to 80. Not inexpensive, but have been using them for several years w/o any problems.
I have an older pair of Otium Sport that are wired and go around my neck. They sound great with plenty of volume. I have been looking for a single earbud. I bought a newer pair of Optium that look the same, but they are not nearly as loud. I wanted a spare. Had to send them back. They were about half as loud as the older pair.
