Uniden BCD996P2 Digital Mobile TrunkTracker V Scanner, 25,000 Dynamically Allocated Channels, Close Call RF Capture Technology, 4-Line Alpha display, Base/Mobile Design, Phase 2, Location-Based Scanning

Recieved in the mail quickly and the scanner works well. Sound quality of the radio is good. It is however a bit tedious programing the scanner via the menus but have downloaded the radio reference free software and the scanner is now up and running with all of my local frequencies. I am getting good reception from PDs 30 miles from my home with the stock antenna. I am however going to give this product four stars, not because the radio lacks quality but because I did not recieve the mounting hardware. Am planning to mount this scanner in my vehicle but the package seems to be missing the twist nuts for the mount and mounting screws. It wont be hard to drive down to my local hardware store to pick up to screws that will work, but at the price point of 350, it is disappointing not to have recieve the radio with all of its intended contents.

no help ,call a few time ... help desk said you need to learn the ferq,,,also need to down loan the site then do the steps ,,,but they would not help me when i had the site and all the step i needed to help me ...i told them i was very new can you do the step with me ,,they said understand what it do frist ,are you be a deer in the head light

Could not keep my freq. when I turned off my scanner. Had to start all over. Very distressing and nerve racking.

Double and triple check that the frequencies you are trying to Program are NOT ENCRYPTED!!! All of the digital frequencies that I paid over $150 to have programmed are absolutely useless because they are encrypted channels. Now I have a $500 analog paperweight sitting on the table next to me!! It took well over a month to get the scanner programmed so I was unable to submit this for a return within the 30 days allowed by Amazon. Caveat emptor

Ive had more experience with Whistler/Grecom so I was curious to try a Uniden. This is their flagship mobile/desktop scanner unless you want their dumbed-down Home Patrol version. Im impressed with the RF performance but the digital P25 performance is relatively poor. P25 calls range from mildly garbled to nearly unintelligible. The BCD992P2 also has trouble following P25 communications often truncating or completely muting the audio. For those who think Im just being hard on Uniden, a Whistler 1098 on the same discone antenna has done FAR better delivering intelligible audio on the exact same traffic. There are also multiple YouTube videos documenting the same thing. Im also disappointed in all the missing features and weird user interface of the Uniden. Whos bright idea was it to define everything around Quick Keys apparently just to be different? A Whistler can log hit counts into the scanner memory while you just let it scan for days if you want. You can then easily sort for the most active channels. That seems a bit too advanced for Unidens firmware people as I havent found any equivalent feature. The Freescan software will log hits on your PC but you cant use the resulting list to edit anything directly in the scanner. For analog use this seems to perform similarly to my Whistler scanners and might have somewhat better RF performance (less susceptible to overload/intermod). For digital it seems to really struggle. And, regardless, the user interface, programming, etc. is generally less intuitive and less capable. Uniden vs Whistler each have their advantages and disadvantages. For me, Unidens poor digital performance and arcane user interface make it the inferior choice. Uniden needs to at least match Whistlers digital performance and come up with a user interface that doesnt seem like it was designed by aliens from another planet.

This is a great desk top scanner. It does have a learning curve, which means you can expect to do some learning! My experience with software called FreeSCAN and RadioReference.com made set-up SO much easier. A 1-yr subscription to RadioReference is $60 at this time, well worth it as it does make set-up using FreeSCAN much easier! All in all, No Regrets, as the scanner price on Amazon is VERY good. Im in a low spot, still reception has not been an issue. The sound quality is good, but there is always room for improvement. Otherwise, no complaints. It is complex, yet doable with some patience and flexibility.

Performed as expected

I love all the whistles and bells on this scanner. Simple to program. Like the option of different display colors for different programmed talk groups. Only thing I dont like is its range. Poor in my opinion. I have a older hd956d its range is twice the distance of this scanner. Overall its a nice add to all my equipment.

Ive been into scanners since I was a kid in college. My first one was a desktop Regency analog scanner. Since then, Ive had 4 other scanners, Uniden and Radio Shack, analog and digital. Unfortunately, my previous digital scanner only picked up P25 Phase I, and most of the PDs in my county have moved to P25 Phase II. These digital scanners arent cheap, which kept me away for many years, but I finally decided to take the plunge again with this Uniden BCD996P2. Ive had no problems manually programming my previous scanners, so I didnt think this one would be too difficult. Programming conventional analog frequencies was fairly easy. But trying to set up a digital trunked system was more difficult than I thought. I think mostly this is because the instruction manual is not very clearly written or logically organized. Watching YouTube videos did little to help. After several hours, and much trial and error, things finally started making sense and I finally did figure it out. But because of how slow and tedious it is to navigate the menus and enter alpha tags etc, it would take me weeks, if not months to manually program everything I want to listen to. In the end, I decided to save myself a lot of time and headache and to avoid needlessly wearing out the buttons, I got the $15 subscription to Radio Reference and used the Freescan software to upload everything I need into my scanner from my computer. In less than an hour, my scanner was all set up. Instead of spending a lot of time toiling over programming the scanner, Im spending my time enjoying it, so I think it was worth it. Aside from the programming aspect and the confusing instruction manual, the scanner itself is great. The digital transmissions come in clear. The analog signals, such as on the air band, will be staticky. It has a lot of other nice features, can change the color of the display backlight, set up weather alerts, pre-programmed searches, such as FM radio, CB radio, FRS channels, and a bunch of features I will probably never use like connecting to a GPS. After many years of missing out, Im glad I can finally hear whats going on again.

This is a review of the Uniden BCD996P2 system. I am a US licensed amateur extra radio operator,, so I have some experience with radios and their operation. I am also a software developer, avid linux user and advocate. The programming aspects of the system did live up to what many of the reviews stated, it is not for the feint of heart. To get any P25 systems into this system you will be well advised to use some programming software. I had to create a windows system on a spare laptop in order to get the firmware update software package to work with the device (strike one) Once updated I attempted to setup my countys government P25 system (phase 1), specifically for the fire department (no, they were not encrypted channels). I programmed the device by hand with no joy. I downloaded multiple software packages that worked with the scanner to try to automatically load the configuration into the system. I even subscribed to radio reference to take advantage of their configuration file downloads. Still no Joy. (strike two). I spent an entire weekend trying various methods to program this scanner. I tried just about every permutation of options that I could find. For some reason there is something that the local P25 system is doing that this scanner appears to be incapable of decoding. I was able to get multiple other P25 (phase 1 and 2) systems working, every other system that I tried and was with in listening distance in fact worked. (strike three) There is next to no online documentation, and it would appear that Uniden is abandoning support of this product. After all of this, I returned the product, totally disappointed. (gave it 2 stars, because it worked for some sites well enough, but the not for the system I intended to use it with) I looked at the next higher cost option, but at $700, and with such a miserable experience with this $400 scanner I opted to buy an $30 USB SDR device and try my hand at open source, which worked perfectly (on linux!). I can put up with windows only options for programming the system, and complex programming requirements. But for $400 the device should just work out of the box.