Uniden Bearcat BC125AT Handheld Scanner, 500-Alpha-Tagged Channels, Close Call Technology, PC Programable, Aviation, Marine, Railroad, NASCAR, Racing, and Non-Digital Police/Fire/Public Safety.

I purchased this product for use when I go out railfanning, to be able to listen in on where trains are located on my local rail line. The scanner works really well and is able to receive radio signals from a pretty far distance away when youre close to an active rail line. The build quality is good for the product, its mostly made of plastic. But thats not a deal breaker in my opinion, since the product feels very durable and doesnt feel like it will fall apart the second it falls onto a concrete floor. I found the interface very easy to understand, all the button functions are clearly labeled and are very easy to figure out all of the functions. The programming software was very easy to use as well, its very similar to using Microsoft Excel. I personally prefer the BC125 over the BC75, because the 125 can store a lot more frequencies and you also get the ability to add in custom names/alpha tags. The only drawback to the product is the range is not very good... But that comes with using the antenna that is provided with the scanner, since its not very long. The scanner can receive signals from channels I programmed as far as 10 miles away from my local railroad mail line, but that applies mainly frequencies that are used on my local railroad. Overall the scanner works very well for my uses, I am very happy with the product, and I would recommend any railroad enthusiast to purchase a radio scanner to use while railfanning. Since it will make your railfanning sessions a lot more fun, since you will know ahead of time whats coming in your direction.

Is a decent analog radio

I had a 25 year old Radio Shack Scanner 10 channel (not ten bank) scanner and it was time to update. Living in the rural area of Northern California, and being an ex-volunteer firefighter, my wife and I depend on our scanner to keep alerted to local emergency events. I decided on the Uniden BC125AT after helping a friend program his. There were a number of things I found that helped me decide: THE GOOD • Good sound. The filtering in this scanner was able to filter out the static noise from the various electronics in our home. • Compact size and comfortable in the hand. • Alpha Numeric channel programming and labeling. The ability to add labels to each channel as it appears on the screen during a transmission makes it easier to know what is actually happening. I can instantly know what dispatch center is transmitting. • The free Windows software available from the Uniden website (link in the owners manual) allowed me to quickly and easily enter the frequencies I wanted along with a name for each channel, save it to a file on my computer, then upload the file to the scanner. With ten separate banks of 505 channels each, it was a simple matter to create separate banks for Fire, Police, Air Firefighting Resources, and even separate banks for local city emergency resources. After I programmed the friends unit I received mine about two days later and it took just a few seconds to upload the data into my BC125AT. • The ability to lock out banks. It is very easy to lock out any of the banks so, for example, you can lock all out except one bank where you program local fire resources. • Scan all banks, scan one bank, or pick on channel to scan. In an emergency it is nice to be able to just listen to the main fire dispatch channel and it is easy to select that function. • The multi-function volume knob. The rotary knob has many functions including setting the volume, adjusting the squelch, scrolling through the channels saved in banks. • Adjustable screen brightness and contract THE BAD (or at least, not as good) • The included rechargeable batteries are decent but the charger in the Uniden is set by time only in hours. Insert a fully-charged pair of cells and plug the Uniden in and if the charger is set to charge for six hours, it will charge for that period of time. This overheats the batteries which can shorten their life. Thy get quite warm to the touch, but so far not dangerously so. I suggest keeping a spare set of batteries charged and switch them out as needed. • It charges through the USB cable, and only charges the batteries when the unit is turned off. If the BC125AT is on, the batteries will not receive a charge. When turned off the charge restarts and will run the full length of time you selected in the menu system. • When I purchased this, the Amazon link to the warranty information was to an old PDF page from 2010 from Uniden that stated the unit had a three (3) year warranty. THAT IS INCORRECT. The printed manual that came with the scanner (©2012) states it has a one (1) year warranty. I called Uniden today (8/6/2018) and that information was confirmed. • The owners manual could be better. This is a powerful unit and can do a lot of things. To access much of the menu system takes multiple button presses. The manual describes these is somewhat more complicated text than is necessary. Flow charts for each functions would have been MUCH better. I know- I have written owners manuals and created flow charts for similar programming and function systems. CONCLUSION I give this unit 4 stars instead of 5 only because of the outdated battery charging system. Other than that, this is a very nice scanner for under $100. I do suggest purchasing the extended warranty so that you have more than one years protection. NOTE: The linked PDF warranty file on the Amazon sales page when I purchased this scanner stated that the warranty was three (3) years. IT IS NOT! That PDF file was from 2010. The ©2012 owners manual that comes with the scanner states that the warranty period is one (1) year. I verified this with Uniden Customer Service.

YouTube setup helped- but it was still difficult to set up, in our rural area we have quite a bit of static I purchased a “better antenna but really didn’t help”.

Im a little stunned by the bad reviews. I couldnt disagree more. This is a great scanner. For the roughly 100 bucks, you really get a lot. Its handheld, which means it travels nicely. Its great for road trips and can keep you in the loop on weather, accidents, and umm, other police activities. It scans CB, FRS/GMRS/MURS and HAM bands which covers pretty much all of the individual use bands. The first two (CB, FRS/GMRS/MURS) are pretty useful on trips too. Its rechargeable, and uses standard AA Ni-MH batteries (included) and you can recharge the batteries right in the scanner from a USB port. You can charge while its on. Also, just in case it matters, you can run it directly from the USB port without any batteries installed at all! Of course, in a pinch you can always use regular non-rechargeable AA batteries which are pretty much the most common batteries in America. Theres a switch inside the battery compartment to tell the scanner what kind of batteries you have so that it wont try to recharge regular batteries. (I know, too much time on batteries but I cant help it. A scanners no good if you cant turn it on!) There are some nice storage features for storing found stations and you can program them in manually too, if you know the frequency. You can name all the stations as well. Additionally, theres are banks of per-programmed frequencies for different uses (fire, police, CB, etc.) to allow you to get started right away. (If youre looking for frequencies just google scanner frequencies and the city or area you live in. Pretty simple...) But really, its connecting to the PC that has me won over. *All* of the settings can be accessed through the PC software available from the website. (The website also includes the *manual* <ahem>, drivers, and firmware updates. The software isnt all that sexy to be sure, but its plenty functional! Its a lot easier to use than typing into the scanner itself. It allows you to save different configurations in separate files so you can have, for instance, a file for Topeka, and another one for Miami. Again, a really nice feature if youre on the road and have a laptop. Cons: You cant actually control the scanning itself from the computer. Not a big deal but the function might be kinda cool. My biggest complaint is that there is not a standing battery indicator. You only get notification when the batteries get low, but you have no idea when that might be. Its just a minor annoyance... maybe itll get fixed in a firmware update? Overall, totally useful.

PROS: Its a lot of scanner for the money. Battery life is about 7-8 hours before it needs recharged. Audio quality is good considering the size of the speaker. Signal sensitivity with the supplied antenna is good. The alpha tagging is awesome. The fit and finish are excellent. The display is excellent. CONS: The owners manual does not do an adequate job of getting the new owner over the initial learning hump needed to setup the scanner. Im a ham radio operator with plenty of experience setting up new radios, yet it took me well over an hour before I became proficient at programming channels and tagging them. Once learned though its dead easy. Programming hints: Any channel that has not been assigned a frequency becomes, by default, locked out. New out of the box the scanner will display a all channels locked out message because you havent yet assigned a frequency to a channel. There is nothing wrong with your scanner. The hold button acts somewhat the same as a manual button on other scanner in that it stops the scanner on a single channel when it is scanning. Once stopped on that channel, use the volume knob to scroll through the channels. In that manner. press the hold button to access the channel you want to add the frequency to. Press Func followed immediately by the PrgE key. Use the volume knob to scroll to enter frequency. Press the PrgE key again. Enter the freq using the keypad numbers. Press PrgE again. Now the radio receiver has a frequency to scan. There is no Menu button. The menu of available actions is spread out among those keys that have secondary red lettering. To access that portion of the menu found on the red lettering keys you must push the Func immediately prior to pushing the red lettering keys. Then use the volume knob to scroll through the available actions, followed by the PrgE key to access that portion of the menu you wish to access. As clunky as my programming hints are they are more clear than the manual.

This scanner is inexpensive for what it does. I purchased the scanner only to monitor ATC and other aircraft since I am a SUAS pilot. It works for what it need it for. The charging is a bit slow, but not a huge obstacle for me.

Bought this for the car to go along with my ham radio hand-held. This is a great little scanner for the money. Very easy to program with a PC and great battery life. It comes with rechargeable batteries, but like other scanners, the antenna has lousy gain, so plan on getting something better. I dont care about P25 or other digital modes, so that was not a problem for me. The keypad is very easy to use and once you know the layout you can easily operate it in the dark, while driving with one hand. Audio is plenty loud. It has an extra feature that is always scanning for near field transmissions, just in case you are wondering if there is a hidden transmitter close by. :-)

I bought the BC125AT to replace my Realistic scanner that was about 25 years old. It is impressive how small the Bearcat is. I found Bearcat easier to program and look at the channels then the Realistic. The manual does a good job of explaining all the aspects of the BC125AT and it is easy to find a topic that you need help with. Downside is that it seems to scan slower then the Realistic. As far as battery life, you have to use the NiMH battery as alkaline only last about 4 hrs. You can adjust how long it takes to recharge the NiMH battery which is handy. The default is 14 hrs but it can be as short as 9 hrs. I had to return the Bearcat to the factory due to a programming problem that showed up after downloading a hardware fix. They fixed the problem under warranty and returned it in about 4 weeks. Overall the unit does a good job of scanning but I feel the Realistic was better. This unit was recommended as a best buy and I guess for the price it does the job.

Really like this Scanner, very easy to program and easy to use with a lot of nice features. Ive always been a radio geek and like listening to radio traffic when Im on trips and traveling. Even though this scanner can only do conventional radio traffic (not digital), for the money it is a very solid unit with a lot to like and only a few drawbacks for the price. Pros: - 500 Channels, with fast 80 channel per second scan rate works real well, no missing transmissions - 10 banks for easy organization of types or areas of frequencies - Very easy to program with the software available online - Has a Close Call feature that quickly locates and temporarily stores in use frequencies that are close to you, even if not programmed in - Temporary lock out for quickly preventing transmissions on busy or nuisance channels (I use this a lot) - CTCSS/DCS tone search on received channels works really really well and is handy for unknown frequencies - Reception is really really good across the spectrum, I use this with a mag mount car antenna and I can scan 2m amateur radio and main public safety repeaters from almost 100 miles away...very impressed - Awesome Alphanumeric display that quickly shows all the data about the user, frequency, tone, and other information Cons - I only have one Con with this unit, and its regarding the battery consumption. It can be a battery hog if you dont have good rechargeable batteries. I usually go through 2 sets of AAs on standard day road trips, and have gone through 3 on day/evening trips. I highly recommend this scanner and have been thoroughly satisfied with it. No it doesnt do digital channels, but that is another total class of unit.