Have owned the 996 for a couple years or so and Got the 600 a couple of weeks ago.
Interfacing to PC: From the start of driver installation to seeing scanner VC on screen was about two minutes for the GRE and twice as long for the UNIDEN; both acceptable.
Speaker Sound Quality:Both are top 20% products with an edge to the 600 since the 996 has a bit too much bass and makes it just slightly muffled.
Memory Space: Both have much more than I need to cover the rural area I am in the most. If I took a mind to put in everything that I may encounter while in the downtown area both would be full and then some, so the edge goes to GRE with the ability to carry V-Folders right in the radio.
Key-Pad Programming:No contest, OOI wins hands down. I pulled it out of the box and have only looked at the manual a handful of times for the location of a certain setting, or to determine what a setting is for that I stumbled across while keying through the menus.
GPS Capability:Obviously not able to apply a fair comparison on this point, but Uniden's inclusion of it makes the 996 the only choice for me for a mobile scanner. But points must be given to GRE for the highly customizable "Roam" setting for multi-site systems. For many cases this would provide rotating coverage that would reasonably simulate GPS Location Based, and in certain situations could provide more relevant coverage when traveling in areas of fluctuating signal strengths.
Software: There's lots of choices for both models and all have their + and -, that's whole different discussion.
Radio ID's ETC.:Not relevant to the 996 since you can't be gawking around at what is happening on the display while mobile, so who cares it does not have them. At home with the GRE, I have T88 and other programs that can show me all I might want to know about CC Data.
For me, the rest of the comparisons that get tossed around, like which display is better or who has better alerts, are just a lot of fluff. Cool features but not relevant to quality of reception or ease of use.
By no means an exhaustive review, just a few significant observations.
Interfacing to PC: From the start of driver installation to seeing scanner VC on screen was about two minutes for the GRE and twice as long for the UNIDEN; both acceptable.
Speaker Sound Quality:Both are top 20% products with an edge to the 600 since the 996 has a bit too much bass and makes it just slightly muffled.
Memory Space: Both have much more than I need to cover the rural area I am in the most. If I took a mind to put in everything that I may encounter while in the downtown area both would be full and then some, so the edge goes to GRE with the ability to carry V-Folders right in the radio.
Key-Pad Programming:No contest, OOI wins hands down. I pulled it out of the box and have only looked at the manual a handful of times for the location of a certain setting, or to determine what a setting is for that I stumbled across while keying through the menus.
GPS Capability:Obviously not able to apply a fair comparison on this point, but Uniden's inclusion of it makes the 996 the only choice for me for a mobile scanner. But points must be given to GRE for the highly customizable "Roam" setting for multi-site systems. For many cases this would provide rotating coverage that would reasonably simulate GPS Location Based, and in certain situations could provide more relevant coverage when traveling in areas of fluctuating signal strengths.
Software: There's lots of choices for both models and all have their + and -, that's whole different discussion.
Radio ID's ETC.:Not relevant to the 996 since you can't be gawking around at what is happening on the display while mobile, so who cares it does not have them. At home with the GRE, I have T88 and other programs that can show me all I might want to know about CC Data.
For me, the rest of the comparisons that get tossed around, like which display is better or who has better alerts, are just a lot of fluff. Cool features but not relevant to quality of reception or ease of use.
By no means an exhaustive review, just a few significant observations.