Interference
DaveIN said:
I would think that the PSR-600 would be better at resisting nearby electronic RF interference. It has an outside and inside metal case, better grounding, and the board layout of the same "RF circuit" is separated and enclosed to avoid spurious signals. This is not to say it will be as sensitive as the PSR-500 as most of the GRE radios are.
If it's any indication, my 2096 resists interference in the audio circuit from my GSM cell phone a million times better than my 96 does. When I'm at home, I generally keep my cell phone sitting on the window sash not a foot away from the 90° 800 MHz duck on the back of my 2096. The only time I ever hear it transmitting is when the 2096 is stopped on an analog talkgroup, and even then, its only a slight annoyance and doesn't happen that often.
On the other hand, when I'm out in the car and have the 96 on, every single time the cell phone transmits, I can hear every bit of it through the 96's speaker. The 2096 obviously has much better shielding than the 96, probably helped a great deal by it's metal case versus the plastic case of the 96. Owning both radios, I can also attest that the audio quality of the 2096 on it's internal speaker is much better than the 96 on it's internal speaker. Again, this probably has to do with the speaker size and the cabinet it's mounted in. The 2096 sounds a lot more like a professional radio, while the 96 can sound "tinny" at times, and you can always hear the audible hiss at the end of a P25 digital voice decode, something you really have to
try to hear on the 2096.
I would expect similar performance out of the 600 over the 500. Of course, if one scanner is all you can afford, the 500 would make better sense because you can take it everywhere with you.
