Help! Which is best AOR, Alinco or ICOM??

[BigJimbo]

I'm looking into getting a handheld wideband receiver. The 3 that look best are the:

AOR8200

Alinco DJ-X2000

ICOM IC-R20

Anyone have any input as to which is the best buy, why or why not? I asked the salespeople at a store that carries all 3, no one really had much to say on any of them, other than ICOM has the best service....but they said with a receiver only, I'm not going to need much service.

All thoughts are appreciated!!

 

[morfis]

I have all three...the Alinco has the best build qaulity, the AOR has the best sales support, the Icom is the one I use most as it has features built in that the AOR has as extras. I find the AOR easier to use and possibly a touch better on milair and UHF which are my main uses for the handhelds

 

[SCPD]

I was going thru the same thing the other week looking to get myself a new handheld radio.
Thankfully I have a few mates who are also in to radios, one has the Alinco DJX2000 and the other has the Icom R20 and AOR8200mk3.

The Alinco was the slowest scanner (4 ch's / second) and was not great on UHF channels. Also the cheapest.

The AOR was the easiest to program by hand and overall had the best preformance on vhf / uhf scanning around the bands but lacked a few features of the Icom R20 (extra cost to buy them) and I didn't like the feel of the keypad.

The Icom was quite easy to use, scanned the fastest and had good preformance on vhf / uhf. The programming software / cable is cheap and easy to come buy, plus we have a local service agent for parts.
The other thing is the extra features the R20 has (Audio recorder, ctcss decode, dual watch)

In the end after a few hours I ended up going for the R20 and it should be here in the next couple of days.

Paul

 

[BigJimbo]

Thanks for the replys. I have it narrowed down to the Alinco or Icom. Tough decision. Thanks for taking the time.