Before buying this scanner I read so many reviews and was convinced I would love this radio. Almost everyone only had really good things to say about it. Oh, what a scanner. Picks up so much, works great etc. Considered legendary, It's got a bit of a cult following. So when I got it and started using it, to say I was disappointed was an understatement. It turned out to be the worst receiver I have ever owned. It was so frustrating to use. The squelch was terrible, scanner keeps resetting itself to tiny kHz steps size and the mode kept resetting also. Speaker was muffled and didn't sound good at all.
Every action required a lot of work. This was a scanner that really showed its age. Not in condition, but with its long drawn out and annoying way of operating. Worst Auto mode ever. Battery life wasn't great either. AA batteries [it takes 4 AA] didn't last long. Even my rechargeable batteries which are 2500mAh didn't last very long. I ended up buying a mains adapter from eBay [pictured]. I got lucky and managed to find a cheap original AOR adapter. But still, it didn't really make my experience using the scanner any better. It was just too frustrating to use.
I have to say, this is the only AOR receiver I have ever had, and going on my experience with the AR8000, it will be my last. Specs were good on paper, and reviews were great, but using this scanner in real life was a pain. Comparing the AOR8000 to my Quansheng K6 [upgraded with Egzumer software] was a real eye opener. Like night and day. The Quansheng was 10 times better. So much easier and hassle free to use. Functions and settings are easy to perform, screen is excellent, squelch is good overall, and the speaker is much clearer.
Receive Strength
This surprised me the most. After reading all the reviews about how good the AOR8000's receive strength was, I expected it to pick up signals that my upgraded Quansheng had no chance of receiving. This was not the case at all. The AOR and Quansheng K6 were nose to nose at picking up signals. The only difference was that the signals on the Quansheng were much clearer and had a better quality about them overall. Now, I know that the AOR8000 is old tech by today's standards but still, I never thought for a second that a cheap [but great] radio from China would basically outperform one of the legends of the scanner industry. I expected the complete opposite.
I think it just shows how far radio technology has come, and how cheap a good performing radio can be once you strip away all the marketing hype and over the top profit margins. I sold my AOR AR-8000 handheld for a cheap price to a guy on Gumtree who already had one but needed another one for parts. He was very happy with it. But I think he had owned his AR8000 for a long time and was so used to using it that he'd rather fix his old one than buy something else. Good on him. But for me, I couldn't get used to it and I would never buy another one.
No comments:
Post a Comment