Our Verdict:
We have now had time to have the radio on test and to check it over, and our overall opinion is that it is a great radio - probably the best legal multimode radio available. It is made in the Uniden factory in Vietnam and the construction is far better than the other Presidents made in China. The casing is both heavier and the paintwork is a better finish.
In standard (legal) mode the radio is 4W on AM & FM and 12W on SSB. It covers the bands for all EU countries, including the UK band. In the UK it operates on FM on the original UK 40 channels (27/81) and in all modes on the EU 40 channels.
The radio has both ANL & NB for noise reduction. The NB only works in all modes (AM/FM/SSB) but the ANL works on AM only.
The built-in echo is adjustable through the menus. As well as turning it on/off you can also adjust both the volume & delay (speed) of the echo.
In the menu you can select between electret or dynamic mic. This allows you to use a wider range of microphones on the radio - some power mics do not work very well on modern radios that are designed for use with electret mics.
The radio has two emergency channels. These are set as cgh.9 and ch.19 but you can adjust these in the menu and set them to whatever two channels you prefer. When you save these, you can also select what mode & band they are set to.
You can select for 7 different colours for the display, you can also adjust the brightness (dimmer) and contrast in the menu.
There is a digital SWR meter built in, which as well as showing the SWR in digital form also has a calibration "tone" that varies depending upon the SWR.
The radio does get very warm on the right hand side of the case,this is due to the voltage regulator and audio IC strapped to the heatsink. Even on receive the radio gets warm, and if transmitting for longer periods (especially when expanded) it does get hot. It is just a fact that the smaller you make a radio then the hotter any heatsink will get, and is nothing to worry about.
In expanded mode you get access to more frequencies (from 24.715 - 30.105mHz) plus a few new features.
A big advantage in the UK is that when expanded you do not lose the UK 40 channels - all you need to do is make sure you are on FM and then press the "F" key for 3 seconds and the radio will switch to the UK 40. Just press "F" again or the mode switch and you will be back in expanded mode.
The radio also covers all the "alpha" channels when in expanded mode, and a "alpha" display appears on the display to show you are on one.
In expanded mode you can also "rename" the bands. Usually they are just A,B,C... but you can rename them to any two letters/numbers (eg call a band EU, LO, HI etc). The bands go in the usual President odd sequence where A is "MID" (EU), B is "HI", C is "LOW" etc.
In expanded mode the power also increases to approx 12W AM, 25W FM and 25W SSB. The power is variable through the menus, and on test I found you could adjust the output down to a minimum 4W on AM, 6W on FM and 2W on SSB.
The SPAN function in the menu allows you to select the tuning step. In standard mode the steps are 10kHz (1 channel) and 100kHz (10 channels). In expanded mode the steps are 01,1,10,100 & 1000kHz.
Below are the features & specifications from the user manual.
