Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)First, this scanner is not digital, so if you are looking to monitor a P25 digital system this is not the scanner for you.
The PSR-700 is the newest scanner in the line from GRE America, it holds the entire Radio Reference database on a 2GB SD card. The database is updated once a week for anything new in the RadioReference database. For anyone that is familiar with scanners, and the normal bank/channel system, this is a complete change. The PSR-700 is a object oriented scanner, which means that each frequency you have is an object, and can be added to a scanlist. A scanlist is equivalent to a bank on a more conventional scanner, the only difference is that you can have any number of frequencies in a scanlist. What makes the PSR-700 favorable to people that move around is that when you set up a group of frequencies to scan, you are not wasting space on a bank because you have 20 frequencies in a bank of 100. I tend to keep things organized by county, so each scanlist is one county. It takes some getting used to for anyone that has used a scanner with banks, but once you get the idea it is actually quite nice.
The other thing about this scanner that makes it great for traveling is that it gives you the ability to add things on the fly. Because it has the entire Radio Reference database. So if you find yourself somewhere that you don't already have preprogrammed, it can be added from the database on the SD card.
There is software that comes with the scanner, it is called EZ Scan. The software is for programming your scanner from your computer. This allows you more control over your scanlists. YOU WILL NEED A CARD READER TO USE THE SOFTWARE. To program the SD card you need to remove it from the scanner and put it in the card reader to upload the data. The suppled USB serves 2 purposes, to charge the scanner from either a computer or USB wall charger and to upgrade the firmware. You cannot program the scanner from the USB cable as you could with previous scanners that use a USB PC/IF port for programming.
The menu's are easy to read, and the buttons are fairly self explanatory. The idea being that this scanner is more like a MP3 player. In fact you no longer hit scan, you hit play to scan and pause to stop on a frequency or talkgroup. There is the normal spectrum sweeper, as well as preprogrammed frequencies like CB/MARINE/GMRS/FRS/MURS/RAILROAD/AIRCRAFT/RAILROAD/PUBLIC SAFETY. I do find that having the entire database, I really no longer use the service searches, but having them there does help to find frequencies that may not be in the database.
This scanner does do analog trunking, it will do Motorola, EDACS and LTR standard. It will not trunk LTR Multinet. The trunking is very easy to set up, and you can import only the talkgroups that you would like, or all of the talkgroups on a system.
The supplied antenna is a pretty decent antenna, although it is a wide band antenna, so if you are monitoring a specific band you may want to get an antenna that is tuned to that band. For all around better performance is all bads, but especially the 800MHz band, I would recommend the Radio Shack 800MHz antenna, #20-283 is the stock number.
The one problem that I do have with this scanner is that there is not a belt clip as there are on most other scanners. This makes the scanner more cumbersome to carry with you. There are carrying cases that you can buy, but I do see this as one major downfall of this scanner. While the size is very small, there is still the antenna to deal with when carrying it. The other part of not having a belt clip is that there is no way to lock the buttons, so if you do put it in your pocket you will push buttons which will result in undesired things happening while you are listening.
The last thing that is nice about his scanner is that you do not have to have a premium membership to Radio Reference to download data. Other scanners you would need to purchase software, and have a premium membership, which is another expense. This scanner has the software as well as the ability to use the database for free.
All in all, this scanner is perfect for someone that is on the go, and travels to quite a few different places that you want to keep in the scanner. It is also nice to have the database, so you can add what you might need on the fly. It is a great scanner for anyone from a beginner to an expert that just wants something easy for mobile use on a day to day basis. It pulls in signals really well, it scans at 75 channels/second which is nice because it missed less of what is going on, and usually beats my other scanners when there is a transmission.
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GRE PSR-700 Ezscan Radio Scanner w/ Built-In Frequency Database on a 2Gb Hd Mem Crd
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