De-lurking here. Review is about right on to me. An aftermarket antenna beats the stubby OEM, the key panel's flat-clear coating appears to be an afterthought (I have renderd my '800 glossy and like it), audio pops, etc. It also looks more professional radio like. I like that it don't look like a typical scanner.
Reviewer has a thing about paper though. I'm all for letting the user choose to have a hardcopy or not. Still hate it when pdf manuals print out a full page with a 6x9 block of text in the middle. Worse still are companies that send two manuals covering 4 languages. I vote for no paper manuals.
Re: Adaptors. I did leave it on to record for a day using a 5vdc charger for a Droid cellphone for power and got a slight hum in the recordings. Using a computer USB port for power all day/night gave clean audio.
The totally new concept of operating a scanner with a D-pad and few buttons was the great unknown to me. I can operate just about any mass produced scanner out there with no instruction. Manual channel select, scan, enter a freq, set a search etc. Bearcat, Uniden, RadioShack don't matter.
I had one of those Sony ICFC1PC radios when they blew out for $99. Darned if I could not memorize the function of that thing. I still need to think and convert the steps to get either the Icom mobile rig or Yaesu VX7 to scan, and scan a selected bank. Brain, it's wired to 1976 when I got my first Bearcat 210.
Yet I quickly caught on to the nested menus in a Zen MP3 player, the clickwheel of an iPod Photo and the CCWitness. If you ever operated one of those (or dealt with DOS directories) the '800 is a cinch.
The Scanlist/Scanset stuff took a few days to comprehend. Being able to block the noisy low band on service search is a plus. Overall, very happy with the radio, sorry that I waited so long to buy it. Scanning is fun again to me.
David K6AYB
BTW Swipesy, the reviewer said the BC100 was the first handheld programmable scanner. Think he's right.