After a week of using Icom alongside Uniden 125 XLT for the airband I am also impressed, despite the fact that it has one major and few minors flaws for me.
Short
Pros - 2 receivers, speed, sensitivity, bluetooth, recording, built-in attenuator, VSC, ANL, nice sound from speaker
Cons - mono jack, not all bluetooth headphones work even those with BT 5.2 and HFP 1.8, sensitivity, only 3 group links for scanning
Long
Major flaw Mono 3.5mm jack! Damn, I want stereo sound without adapters sticking out of the device. Mono-stereo 90° adapters are not available in Europe and China, but they are available in the US. The problem with adapters from the US is their shape, because the jack on the ICOM is very recessed, so the jack on the adapter does not fit along its entire length and price for little plastic adapter.
Minor problem is Bluetooth headphones. Even though I have Sony headphones that meet the BT specification, the sound from them mutes and distorts when signal drops just a little bit to the point where chatter is unintelligible. Maybe it's a problem with the BT module in the Icom, maybe it's bad headphones.
Scanning speed – compared to the Uniden 125 XLTC, it's in a completely different league. Thanks to two receivers and the ability to scan on both at the same time, the scanning speed is incredible. When I compare it to scanning with Freqman plugin-1ms detect time in SDR Sharp (Airspy Mini), ICOM scans stored channels just as fast, or even slightly faster!(Not to be confused with the Frequency Scanner
plugin, which scans at "warp speed")
Sensitivity! I didn't believed I would be able to pick up ATIS from our local airport 25 km away in undulating terrain and in the middle of the city! Normal air traffic at FL360 can be picked up at more than 300km with small FA-B02AR airband antenna. It even receives PMRs and local repeaters with this narrow bandwidth antenna, Just WOW! Uniden was silent...
Sensitivity is also a problem, because the IC-R15 can be easily overwhelmed by RFI from the electric oven of a local kebab vendor when you walk by, and even from PC monitor at home, but compared to the competition in the form of the Uniden 125, we have a built-in attenuator that can handle receiver overload problems. Also tested on an unfiltered system without CCIR-DAB-LTE filters with a large airband dipole antenna. ATT OFF and squelch needed to be set to 2, and there was no problem with reception.
This feature is probably insignificant for US airband listeners, but important for European listeners. Unlike Uniden125, this scanner has a narrow filter for AM, so it can easily separate traffic on two adjacent channels with 8.33 kHz channel spacing without crosstalk and without jumping to the channel with a stronger signal.
I use RT systems for programming, and working with categories and banks is a joy! 2000 channels, I think that this can store almost all frequencies for European airspace. When scanning with the IC-R15, the only downside is that there are only 3 group links where you can set the banks that will be scanned. 6 or 10 groups would be ideal (if anyone from Icom is reading this, here's a tip for improvement for the next FW version).
Is the IC-R15 worth the high price? Yes and no, for some, it's just an expensive analog receiver with no DMR or other digital features, but for aviation band listeners and airshow photographers like me, it's a must-have. It's my second handheld scanner, and I should have bought it right away instead of the Uniden. For such fast scanning on two receivers, I would have had to buy two Unidens, which is more than two-thirds of the price of the IC-R15, and the rest of the price is easily offset by other features such as sensitivity of receiver, bluetooth, recording, attenuator, VSC, ANL, narrow AM filter
