I've been looking for "the right" digital handheld for about a year.
After spending some time with a demo PSR-500, I ended up with a 330T and 396T instead.
In hopes that it will be useful information for someone out here, here's how that happened:
I relocated to a digital area about a year ago, got a 996T, and started looking for a comparable handheld. After my 996T spoiled me for units without temporary channel lockout, I initially rejected the 396T to wait for a new model that would surely have this feature. Also Uniden digital audio seemed improvable from comments here and from experience with my 996T.
I read the prerelease stuff here on the 500 and got pretty pumped about its temp-channel lockout, "better" digital audio, and the need to program channels only once and assign them to various scan lists without reentry.
When I finally got my hands on one I was impressed with the new programing concept, the logical scanlist/channel selection via arrow keys, and its satisfactory digital audio. I also liked the LED alarms, and the easy to use "Favorite" scan list.
On the down side, I hated the volume control transfer function... it was so steep on the low end that, in bed at night, I frequently was unknowingly at mute level or blast-the-wife-awake level with the tiniest movement of the control. And once I got it set (usually by opening the squelch and creeping up on the hiss) I could never reproduce that setting by touch.
I was willing to live with that one issue to have the 500's good operability and all the other features I found useful.
But the deal breaker for me (in my very noisy environment here in coastal SoCal) was I couldn't use it inside my home. For whatever reason (and I'm certainly not an RF guy) there were many band segments that were not scannable because of failure of the unit to reject unwanted signals. This was particularly bad on the Marine and Air bands where I found a broad collection of maximum squelch busting hiss and also broadcast radio bleed thru on several channels. The problem here was that even the attenuator couldn't kill all of the unwanted stuff, and when it was on, some of the wanted stuff wouldn't come thru.
So I decided to wait for the pending s/w upgrades that I hoped *might* *somehow* address this (although it seemed like a hardware issue to me)... and while I was waiting I stumbled onto a brand new BR-330T for sale. It would give me walkaround capability for everything but the digital stuff... and I figured I'd just dump it later after the new digitals hit the market.
But I quickly began to think of the 330T as the best handheld I had ever owned! I liked the size, the simplicity (no learning curve because I already had a 996T), and best of all it was bulletproof in my excessively noisy home environment!
But mostly it just worked well on every band of interest.
I became a big fan of the Uniden PM team as a result of using this classic-to-be unit!
And I even found myself rationalizing its "issues", like the low contrast LCD display, the non-latching Function key, and particularly the missing temporary channel lockout... because in spite of these it was just such a totally cool little scanner.
Then it occurred to me the 396T could work here for the same reason... and I could get one NOW... LOL!
So this way I get to use my same scanning plan across all three units (the PSR-500 has only 20 scanlists and no groups) and maybe even share some of the ARC data files(?).
For digital audio (using the same antenna and external amplified speaker) the 396T *seems* to be a bit better than the 996T (?), but one thing for sure is I need a good signal to get good quality digital audio... and when I have a good signal the 396T audio seems just as good as with the 500 in my experience.
Of course, if Uniden announces a 396T replacement at the trade shows after the first of the year, then the real "scanner of my dreams" may be out here by summer, and this will not have been such a great decision. But I'm guessing that won't happen, and that I'll be happy with these units for some time to come.
I hope hearing the way this decision went down is useful to someone out here.
PS: One thing I *will* miss is Don Starr's wonderful Win500 application I enjoyed watching him develop while I was using the PSR-500... now there's a guy who writes good stuff!
After spending some time with a demo PSR-500, I ended up with a 330T and 396T instead.
In hopes that it will be useful information for someone out here, here's how that happened:
I relocated to a digital area about a year ago, got a 996T, and started looking for a comparable handheld. After my 996T spoiled me for units without temporary channel lockout, I initially rejected the 396T to wait for a new model that would surely have this feature. Also Uniden digital audio seemed improvable from comments here and from experience with my 996T.
I read the prerelease stuff here on the 500 and got pretty pumped about its temp-channel lockout, "better" digital audio, and the need to program channels only once and assign them to various scan lists without reentry.
When I finally got my hands on one I was impressed with the new programing concept, the logical scanlist/channel selection via arrow keys, and its satisfactory digital audio. I also liked the LED alarms, and the easy to use "Favorite" scan list.
On the down side, I hated the volume control transfer function... it was so steep on the low end that, in bed at night, I frequently was unknowingly at mute level or blast-the-wife-awake level with the tiniest movement of the control. And once I got it set (usually by opening the squelch and creeping up on the hiss) I could never reproduce that setting by touch.
I was willing to live with that one issue to have the 500's good operability and all the other features I found useful.
But the deal breaker for me (in my very noisy environment here in coastal SoCal) was I couldn't use it inside my home. For whatever reason (and I'm certainly not an RF guy) there were many band segments that were not scannable because of failure of the unit to reject unwanted signals. This was particularly bad on the Marine and Air bands where I found a broad collection of maximum squelch busting hiss and also broadcast radio bleed thru on several channels. The problem here was that even the attenuator couldn't kill all of the unwanted stuff, and when it was on, some of the wanted stuff wouldn't come thru.
So I decided to wait for the pending s/w upgrades that I hoped *might* *somehow* address this (although it seemed like a hardware issue to me)... and while I was waiting I stumbled onto a brand new BR-330T for sale. It would give me walkaround capability for everything but the digital stuff... and I figured I'd just dump it later after the new digitals hit the market.
But I quickly began to think of the 330T as the best handheld I had ever owned! I liked the size, the simplicity (no learning curve because I already had a 996T), and best of all it was bulletproof in my excessively noisy home environment!
But mostly it just worked well on every band of interest.
I became a big fan of the Uniden PM team as a result of using this classic-to-be unit!
And I even found myself rationalizing its "issues", like the low contrast LCD display, the non-latching Function key, and particularly the missing temporary channel lockout... because in spite of these it was just such a totally cool little scanner.
Then it occurred to me the 396T could work here for the same reason... and I could get one NOW... LOL!
So this way I get to use my same scanning plan across all three units (the PSR-500 has only 20 scanlists and no groups) and maybe even share some of the ARC data files(?).
For digital audio (using the same antenna and external amplified speaker) the 396T *seems* to be a bit better than the 996T (?), but one thing for sure is I need a good signal to get good quality digital audio... and when I have a good signal the 396T audio seems just as good as with the 500 in my experience.
Of course, if Uniden announces a 396T replacement at the trade shows after the first of the year, then the real "scanner of my dreams" may be out here by summer, and this will not have been such a great decision. But I'm guessing that won't happen, and that I'll be happy with these units for some time to come.
I hope hearing the way this decision went down is useful to someone out here.
PS: One thing I *will* miss is Don Starr's wonderful Win500 application I enjoyed watching him develop while I was using the PSR-500... now there's a guy who writes good stuff!
