landradi00
Member
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2019
- Messages
- 13
Context: Seattle area listener, previously using BR330T primarily for public safety (the Seattle area police/fire are on a P25 Trunked Phase 1 Conventional Modulation system) with some opportunistic or occasional air, rail, marine, or other. Hence all my feedback is in reference to that experience. I listen typically at -80 dB to a simulcast in the city, usually driving in town close.
Physical: This is a big, unwieldy radio. The battery (extended) makes this a beast to fit in any but a real cargo type pocket without bulging. I have not used the belt clip / mike clip thing on the back, but it doesn't look as though it will work right due to the bulge of the retrofit extended battery putting torque on the clip in many use cases.
The connection ports (earphone, usb) have rubberized covers, which should provide some splash / rain resistance. However, it also means that one-handed plugging in of a headphone or aux audio cable for speakers is tricky / impossible.
Power: The thing is a beast on power. Quite warm when the battery's been working hard. I assume this is related to the SDR approach, where a CPU is doing a lot of processing. But it also strikes me that the screen may be at issue. It's a VERY big screen compared to the BR300T. It also is only ever "on" when it is lit, as opposed to the BR's LCD + backlight being separate. Hence, if you want to see what's going on, you're lighting up a pretty big screen.
A couple of smaller / idiosyncratic things on power. I have found that plugging in to anything shy of a high-output power brick or computer USB, I get a "low USB bus voltage" error which not only doesn't charge the thing but won't even let it run. Very annoying. This includes on my car USB output which should be close to 1.0 A. If you do plug it into a computer, you'll then get everything coming to a halt as you choose Serial or Mass Storage functionality; with Serial you can continue to listen while you charge, which isn't obvious.
No option to use AA or other disposable / externally rechargeable batteries.
Keypad: The keypad is largely reversed from the BR's layout, making power on/off, lockout/avoid quite confusing. Hold is achieved only through soft keys, and the hold behaves somewhat idiosyncratically given whether it's a channel, department, system, or site hold. The keypad's tactile feedback is more subtle, particularly for me on the soft keys at top, and I have had times when I "felt" the key click but didn't cause it to actuate. The layout is also somewhat more subtle to navigate, with much smaller "bumps" of keys for the fingers to traverse.
Volume/Squelch Dial: A somewhat loose and almost janky feel when wiggled compared to the BR. Good commanding clickety rotation. Depressing it is also firm and confident, BUT, the effect of depressing the dial is context-dependent (See below).
Audio: When things are working well, mid-span of a transmission, it must be said that the SDS100 gives superior audio to the BR in my experience. This is after fiddling with the Filter setting. I also include the fact that I get P25 Phase 2 digital on the SDS100 which was not available at all on the BR, which is analog modulation only. The audio is across the board somewhat quieter I find than the equivalent volume setting on the BR.
However, getting to the point of superior audio is tricky. By default many of the channels from the database had "Digital Wait Time" of 400 ms associated with them; that basically guaranteed a 0.4 second gap before any audio came out, which for dispatch transmissions effectively loses the first syllable or sometimes two. "Three King Two" becomes "...Two" which makes a call sign undiscernible. Also, a particular defect when trying to hold on a content-filled interesting transmission is the silencing of the underlying audio during the local key press acknowledgement beep on, for example, Channel hold. That too will lose a couple syllables. Inexplicably, the beep is not only played and silences on the speaker, but is recorded in the replay mode as well.
Context-dependency: The way this thing works is very unfriendly to use without your eyes. Obviously this is bad for a blind user but affects also those who might want to, say, hold on a conversation or change volume with the radio on a belt or in the pocket. The Volume/Squelch dial or any key when depressed in "screen off" mode only turns on the screen, but does not take its effect. But it DOES give the identical ack beep in many cases to the desired effect. So there's no sequence of dial manipulation that will reliably, say, reduce the volume by 3 notches. You have to know whether the screen is on or off to know how to manipulate the dial to do that.
Also, there are a number of times when pressing a soft key will add or release a hold but it's not clear what is happening since the ack beep is identical. There are also some not-super-clear time-dependent effects. It seems like specific beeps (up tones or down tones) and a visual cue (holding, releasing, etc.) would be trivial. Plus of course the issue of beeps masking the rx audio instead of being mixed in.
Speed: Speed of scanning my favorites is quite good, though not stunning. Definitely faster than the BR.
Recording: It does it, the BR doesn't at all. That said I haven't found a huge use for it yet. In Seattle you've got stuff going on almost all the time, so if there's something of interest that just happened, it's much more important to hold on that channel than it is to replay it, since if it scans onto another channel it'll start recording that instead.
Detailed Display: The available info such as RSSI in dBm, Noise indicator, Sys ID and UID and TGID, are very handy to have. You have to set up for a custom detailed display but this is reasonably straightforward.
National Database: Having the ability to keep the full national DB (shipped with the unit) on the SD card is great. It gives you a headstart on a new region. But it's damn near impossible to make serious use of it without software and a PC anyhow. For example I went to Oregon and there were so many things to scan using the Nationwide DB that the only way to make real use of it was to find a Department that was active and hold on that department; otherwise, it would spend minutes scanning through things like US Forest Service and various counties that I really couldn't hear, such that it was effectively silent 90% of the time despite being in a very radio-heavy area (Portland metro).
Overall -- I don't feel I got 2.5x as much capability as from the BR330T. It's probably a 20% improvement on the old analog modulation simulcasts (though I have heard for others the simulcast performance gap is much better and even crucial to intelligibility) and of course an infinite improvement on the digital modulations. I also want to give a shout out to the many pieces of possible quite design-constraining functionality that were incorporated in the design, like an IPX water resistance level and the multicolor screen. It just happens to be that for me those are superfluous compared with what those things are traded off against, namely ease of manipulation (plugging in headphones) and battery life...
I would love to see firmware address several of the issues above, including the key beep and context-dependency issues. The great thing here would be if the promise of SDR can be vindicated through firmware updates that meaningfully improve on the functionality. If that were achieved with a good update cadence and thoughtful attention to user experience issues like this, I could see this easily being a radio well worth the investment.
Physical: This is a big, unwieldy radio. The battery (extended) makes this a beast to fit in any but a real cargo type pocket without bulging. I have not used the belt clip / mike clip thing on the back, but it doesn't look as though it will work right due to the bulge of the retrofit extended battery putting torque on the clip in many use cases.
The connection ports (earphone, usb) have rubberized covers, which should provide some splash / rain resistance. However, it also means that one-handed plugging in of a headphone or aux audio cable for speakers is tricky / impossible.
Power: The thing is a beast on power. Quite warm when the battery's been working hard. I assume this is related to the SDR approach, where a CPU is doing a lot of processing. But it also strikes me that the screen may be at issue. It's a VERY big screen compared to the BR300T. It also is only ever "on" when it is lit, as opposed to the BR's LCD + backlight being separate. Hence, if you want to see what's going on, you're lighting up a pretty big screen.
A couple of smaller / idiosyncratic things on power. I have found that plugging in to anything shy of a high-output power brick or computer USB, I get a "low USB bus voltage" error which not only doesn't charge the thing but won't even let it run. Very annoying. This includes on my car USB output which should be close to 1.0 A. If you do plug it into a computer, you'll then get everything coming to a halt as you choose Serial or Mass Storage functionality; with Serial you can continue to listen while you charge, which isn't obvious.
No option to use AA or other disposable / externally rechargeable batteries.
Keypad: The keypad is largely reversed from the BR's layout, making power on/off, lockout/avoid quite confusing. Hold is achieved only through soft keys, and the hold behaves somewhat idiosyncratically given whether it's a channel, department, system, or site hold. The keypad's tactile feedback is more subtle, particularly for me on the soft keys at top, and I have had times when I "felt" the key click but didn't cause it to actuate. The layout is also somewhat more subtle to navigate, with much smaller "bumps" of keys for the fingers to traverse.
Volume/Squelch Dial: A somewhat loose and almost janky feel when wiggled compared to the BR. Good commanding clickety rotation. Depressing it is also firm and confident, BUT, the effect of depressing the dial is context-dependent (See below).
Audio: When things are working well, mid-span of a transmission, it must be said that the SDS100 gives superior audio to the BR in my experience. This is after fiddling with the Filter setting. I also include the fact that I get P25 Phase 2 digital on the SDS100 which was not available at all on the BR, which is analog modulation only. The audio is across the board somewhat quieter I find than the equivalent volume setting on the BR.
However, getting to the point of superior audio is tricky. By default many of the channels from the database had "Digital Wait Time" of 400 ms associated with them; that basically guaranteed a 0.4 second gap before any audio came out, which for dispatch transmissions effectively loses the first syllable or sometimes two. "Three King Two" becomes "...Two" which makes a call sign undiscernible. Also, a particular defect when trying to hold on a content-filled interesting transmission is the silencing of the underlying audio during the local key press acknowledgement beep on, for example, Channel hold. That too will lose a couple syllables. Inexplicably, the beep is not only played and silences on the speaker, but is recorded in the replay mode as well.
Context-dependency: The way this thing works is very unfriendly to use without your eyes. Obviously this is bad for a blind user but affects also those who might want to, say, hold on a conversation or change volume with the radio on a belt or in the pocket. The Volume/Squelch dial or any key when depressed in "screen off" mode only turns on the screen, but does not take its effect. But it DOES give the identical ack beep in many cases to the desired effect. So there's no sequence of dial manipulation that will reliably, say, reduce the volume by 3 notches. You have to know whether the screen is on or off to know how to manipulate the dial to do that.
Also, there are a number of times when pressing a soft key will add or release a hold but it's not clear what is happening since the ack beep is identical. There are also some not-super-clear time-dependent effects. It seems like specific beeps (up tones or down tones) and a visual cue (holding, releasing, etc.) would be trivial. Plus of course the issue of beeps masking the rx audio instead of being mixed in.
Speed: Speed of scanning my favorites is quite good, though not stunning. Definitely faster than the BR.
Recording: It does it, the BR doesn't at all. That said I haven't found a huge use for it yet. In Seattle you've got stuff going on almost all the time, so if there's something of interest that just happened, it's much more important to hold on that channel than it is to replay it, since if it scans onto another channel it'll start recording that instead.
Detailed Display: The available info such as RSSI in dBm, Noise indicator, Sys ID and UID and TGID, are very handy to have. You have to set up for a custom detailed display but this is reasonably straightforward.
National Database: Having the ability to keep the full national DB (shipped with the unit) on the SD card is great. It gives you a headstart on a new region. But it's damn near impossible to make serious use of it without software and a PC anyhow. For example I went to Oregon and there were so many things to scan using the Nationwide DB that the only way to make real use of it was to find a Department that was active and hold on that department; otherwise, it would spend minutes scanning through things like US Forest Service and various counties that I really couldn't hear, such that it was effectively silent 90% of the time despite being in a very radio-heavy area (Portland metro).
Overall -- I don't feel I got 2.5x as much capability as from the BR330T. It's probably a 20% improvement on the old analog modulation simulcasts (though I have heard for others the simulcast performance gap is much better and even crucial to intelligibility) and of course an infinite improvement on the digital modulations. I also want to give a shout out to the many pieces of possible quite design-constraining functionality that were incorporated in the design, like an IPX water resistance level and the multicolor screen. It just happens to be that for me those are superfluous compared with what those things are traded off against, namely ease of manipulation (plugging in headphones) and battery life...
I would love to see firmware address several of the issues above, including the key beep and context-dependency issues. The great thing here would be if the promise of SDR can be vindicated through firmware updates that meaningfully improve on the functionality. If that were achieved with a good update cadence and thoughtful attention to user experience issues like this, I could see this easily being a radio well worth the investment.
