The WS1040 Handheld Digital Scanner Radio from Whistler is a small, portable scanner that can run on household electrical power when stationary or AA batteries when on the go. It allows you to listen to police, fire, EMS, public service, marine, HAM, and weather. The ability to monitor my surroundings is essential to mine and my family’s safety. Even if I don’t keep it turned on, I can activate the scanner during a possible emergency.

With today’s current political environment, declining economy, crime, inflation, slowing housing market and a bit of unrest, keeping tabs on what’s going on around me is critical. Whether you want to know of criminal activity in your area or keep up-to-date on weather emergencies, a digital scanner radio is essential.

For being such a small radio, the Whistler WS1040 scanner is a feature-rich piece of equipment that allows for the storage of over 38,000 scannable objects that can be divided in to 21 scanning configurations. This allows you to group and organize the objects and scan them according to your needs. For example, you might be interested in a weather report but don’t need to be interrupted by what the county parks are doing.

This might see a bit overwhelming and honestly, I feel if you tried to do that much programming by hand, it would be. Fortunately, there is software that can be downloaded that allows quick and easy programming from your PC or laptop. For me, this is the only practical way to program the scanner efficiently. Another option on the WS1040 is its search capability. The scanner can be set to find any active frequencies in whatever range you preset, up to 1800.

The scanner was easy to set up. Just install the 4 AA batteries and attach the antenna and it was ready for programming. You can program the scanner as it is, but I found this slow and cumbersome so I purchased the patch cord that allowed me to connect the scanner to my laptop and program that way. It was far easier and faster.

The Whistler WS1040 handheld digital scanner radio was just what I was looking for for emergencies and knowing what’s going on in my neighborhood. The WS1040 scanner can be purchased here on Amazon.