AOR AR8200 MkII

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How do you make a good receiver even better? You listen to your customers, of course! AOR did just that when they released their "Superior Concept" AR8200 back in the middle of 1998. They applied the feedback received from their AR8000 customers and used it to create one of the most highly anticipated high-end models of all time. But when you set your sites on such lofty goals, it's too easy to fall from grace if you don't pay attention to cross all of your t's and dot all of your i's. AOR did miss the mark I think they were aiming for when they released the AR8200 and one wonders if they were surprised at the results? Here it is, nearly two years later, and AOR has once again shown they are listening to the "little people." On the surface, the AR8200 MkII appears to be many things its predecessor should have and everything the scanning hobbyist could ever want in a handheld receiver. How close to the bull's-eye did they get this time? What follows are my personal impressions regarding the features and performance of this receiver. This, in no way, should be viewed as an endorsement to purchase this radio nor is it intended to discourage anyone from buying it. I have no personal or business relations with AOR Ltd or AOR USA. These are simply thoughts offered to my fellow hobbyists who may be interested in purchasing this particular radio or learning more about it. A lot of hard work and effort has gone into the testing and writing of this review. I would appreciate it if every effort is made to keep this document whole with me as the original author. Of course, it doesn't hurt that this document is copyrighted and therefore protected by US law and international treaties governing intellectual property. Except for personal use, and for the sake of brief passages quoted in reviews and given appropriate credit, no part of this work may be reproduced in any forms or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author. Thank you and enjoy! Rich Wells N2MCA Strong Signals web site

This document contains the following sections:

Introduction

Product Press

What You Get

Models Tested

Basic Specs

Operating Manual

Construction and Physical

Antenna

Features

Pictures

Slot Cards

HF Performance

VHF/UHF Performance

Ranking

Things I Like

Things I Would Change

Summary

Thanks!

Introduction

This review does not intend to cover every nook and cranny of the AR8200 MkII

Since it is an update to the original AR8200, only those details which have changed for the MkII release will be covered

For those wanting the "rest of the story," be sure to read my original AR8200 review

Product Press

Print advertisements documented the following 7 feature upgrades:

• Temperature Compensated Crystal Oscillator (TCXO) for greater frequency stability and minimal internal noise
• Increased dynamic range providing greater sensitivity while reducing strong signal overload
• Telescoping whip antenna replaces a mediocre duck
• Brighter backlight for display and keypad
• Increased capacity NiCd AA cells
• Standard numeric keypad
• Case color changed to black

What You Get

AR8200/AR8200B MkII

24" telescoping whip antenna w/elbow joint

Medium Wave (MW) antenna

AC adapter (if used within country of purchase)

Car DC adapter

4 AA NiCds, 1000 mAh

Metal belt clip

Hand strap

Operating Manual

Operating Manual Addendum

Models Tested

AR8200 Serial # : 0773xx

AR8200B Serial # : 5530xx

Operating Manual

The manual has not been updated

What is included is a one page yellow addendum sheet to note the changes for the MkII version

Item #1 covers the change in the keypad layout (where the position of the '.' and '0' keys have been swapped)

Item #2 mentions the new TCXO which replaces the simple reference crystal

Item #3 pertains to the new antenna

Item #4 discusses the change in values between the S-meter reading and level squelch feature

Item #5 talks about the increased capacity NiCds

Item #6 covers the changes made to the battery compartment

Construction and Physical

The first, obvious difference is the change from the avocado green case color (which would have fit in well with most 1970s decor) to black

While many of the handheld models on today's market appear to be black, holding them next to the AR8200 MkII sets the record straight as to which is dark gray and which is really black

The flat black color does make it look quite professional

As soon as you pick up the MkII you instantly realize the next change which has been made if you've ever owned the original AR8200

The rubberized coating which proved so popular on the original model has been lost on the MkII!

Holding both models in your hands, it's easy to come to the conclusion that the original model feels more solid and better built

Actual testing of the flexure of body panels proves the AR8200 is slightly more solid. While almost no flexure was detected on the original, it is much easier to feel on the MkII. I doubt this is a result of the lack of coating but whether it is due to a redesign for the MkII or a simple manufacturing tolerance variability may never be known. Luckily, it is nowhere near the poor construction that marred the AR8000's reputation

The coating on the original model was a unique feature of the AR8200 which further helped to set it apart from all other competitors. The MkII now feels like all other plastic handhelds

Let's just say that I am very tempted to take the internals out of the MkII and put them into the original, green case! How's that for customization?!

As mentioned in the press advertisements, the '0' key swapped position with the '.' key due to customer requests that the keypad have a standard layout

While we're on the topic of the keypad, another difference is easily evident in the type of coating on the keys

The original model had key coatings which were very rounded and shiny. The MkII keys are much less rounded and have more of a matte finish which reflects much less light making the keypad easier to read from certain viewing angles

Unfortunately, the same orange color is used for secondary text on the keys which makes it nearly impossible to read!

One unique feature of the AR8200 was its introduction of the 4-way rocker switch. While it takes a little getting use to, I find that it is a helpful tool. Problem is that I find it too sensitive and it is too often getting bumped, usually causing unwanted frequency deviations

Next to the innovative 4-way rocker was another cool concept; the thumbwheel control

While early versions, like mine, had a series of finely etched groves, later versions used wider spaced ridges for improved feel. The MkII has these same ridges

Users of the original 8200 know that certain brands of rechargeable batteries would not fit in the battery compartment due to the restrictive button slots for the batteries to slip into

This is no longer a problem on the MkII!

The compartment has also been widened making it much easier to insert and remove cells

Unfortunately the battery cover is still a pain in the backside to take off

One of the first things I did when I received the AR8200B MkII was to attach the antenna, fully extend it, and begin to test the sensitivity of this new receiver

While waiting for certain test frequencies to become active, I would look over the new black case and lack of coating. It is here that I discovered a defect

With the antenna fully extended then placing the body horizontal and sighting down the front panel, it was easy to see that the antenna was not parallel with the sides of the radio!

While not really evident with the antenna retracted, once extended it became clear that the BNC connector was slightly tilted toward the middle of the radio

When I received the AR8200 MkII, the same test did not reveal the severe BNC "tilt" I found on the US model

Hopefully this was a simply manufacturing variance and will not effect its long term durability

Antenna

The HF/VHF/UHF supplied antenna is likely the AOR TW500 and replaces the original rubber duck (DA900?)

The MW antenna is still supplied and plugs into the slot on the top panel underneath the protective, sliding cover

The TW500 is 24" (61cm) in length when fully extended with 7 segments

The base section actually screws into a lug which forms one part of the elbow joint (I discovered this very early since the AR8200B MkII arrived with the whip nearly halfway unscrewed from the base!)

As a warning to all MkII owners, be sure to check the tightness of this connection from time to time lest you are walking along one day and look down to find the whip portion has loosened and fallen off somewhere! Those who do not wish to be bothered with this may choose to use some form of locking compound to keep these two pieces bonded together

Features

Two keypad changes were mentioned above (key swapping and coating)

Another change I see is the feeling when pressing a key

The original model had an OK feel but you never knew when the key press was actually registered until the key beep was heard

On the MkII, pressing a key results in a definite "snap" as the key is registered which adds greatly to feedback and therefore usage

Those AR8200 owners who read their manuals carefully or followed the discussions on the Internet know that the thumbwheel control also has a switch which is activated by pressing inward. Unfortunately, AOR chose to attach no function to this action

Just like the keypad, when the thumbwheel is pressed on the MkII there is a definite "snap" compared to the spongy feel of the original AR8200

The backlight for both display and keypad has been increased greatly!

I'll say it's about 4 times as bright on the MkII

While some will applaud this to no end, I'll say that I find it to be too bright for normal, handheld use. If you desire to view the LCD from an extended distance, then I think that the light will be more suitable to this type of usage

If I had my way, I'd allow the user to select a dim, regular/medium, or bright setting. Doesn't seem a lot of ask on a receiver which is known for a million user-configurable settings

It would also have the benefit of allowing the user to trade off brightness versus battery drain

Now let's talk about that battery drain! What's the price that has to be paid for that luminous backlight?

Hooking up the original AR8200 to the digital multimeter, turning off the power saver and parking on an inactive frequency with the squelch closed shows it to draw about 145 milliamps just as the manual states!

The same test on the MkII shows a steady state drain of 160 milliamps

Returning to the AR8200 shows that an additional 15 milliamps is used to power the backlight while the MkII likes to hog 50 milliamps!

Doing some rough calculations, the AR8200 will eat through its 700 mAh batteries (using the above numbers) in 4.8 hours with the backlight off and 4.4 hours with it on

Looking at the MkII and its 1000 mAh cells, that comes out to 6.3 and 4.8, respectively

For those who shy away from using the backlight, that represents an additional 1.5 hours of monitoring or 31% increase!

But while the use of the backlight on the AR8200 only decreases operating time by a measly 1%, MkII users will suffer by almost 24%!

Like using any other radio, to get the most mileage out of your batteries, keep backlight use to a minimum and use the power saver whenever possible

Audio frequency response has also been changed

The MkII has less high frequency response (which means less "hiss" on weaker signals) and it also sounds more full-bodied when listening to FM broadcast stations

I find both to be welcome changes and am still impressed with the fidelity of its small speaker

As mentioned earlier, there has been a change with regard to the relationship between squelch meter readings and the level squelch values

While the AR8200 mapped the 14 squelch meter levels onto 255 level squelch values, the Mark II maps these 14 onto only the first 80 or so of the available 255 values

The purpose of level squelch is to be able to set an artificial squelch level without having to touch the physical control

By setting the level squelch to a numeric value, this represents the minimum signal level to open the squelch (as it relates to the S-meter reading while receiving said signal)

In the original AR8200 value, this numeric level squelch value was usually set somewhere between 120 and 230. That's quite a wide range of values to have to play with to find the level that will work in your circumstance

Perhaps that's why the MkII changed the scale because the manual states that typical values will range between 5 and 60

There's also been a change to the S-meter display but I'm not sure when this occurred (I'm tempted to think on later model AR8200s and not with the changes for the MkII)

On my 8200, when the carrier drops, the S-meter does not drop to 0 but takes several seconds to ramp down. This annoyance does not occur on the MkIIs I tested

While some print ads mentioned that the NiCds would be increased to 1100 mAh (and others that they would just be increased), the cells provided on both the AR8200 and AR8200B MkIIs were 1000 mAh Sanyos

One nasty problem I had on my original 8200 was that the battery saver feature was able to unlock the PLL (a piece of radio circuitry which assures that the radio remains tuned to the requested frequency) which effectively negates the radio's ability to receive a signal

On my 8200 all I had to do was turn on the power saver, wait for it to go into power saver mode, then turn the squelch fully open or hold down the Monitor key. Instead of opening the squelch and getting a rush of static like you'd expect, the radio would, instead, respond by display "PLL Error". To remove this error, I had to tune to another frequency

While the MkII has remedied part of this, they've also introduced a related problem

While I can no longer recreate this problem using the squelch, it still occurs using the Monitor key!

Even worse, tuning to another frequency does not bring the PLL back! I have to turn the radio off and then back on to return it to normal operating status

One test which can be done on a radio with single sideband receive modes is that they can be used to tune a zero-beat frequency to determine how far off frequency a radio is tuning the requested frequency. It's also nice when a radio like the 8200 has AFC which can be used to help check your work (they usually agree within a few hundred Hertz)

On the original AR8200, it was off by about 0.5kHz on VHF-hi signals, 1kHz off up around 450MHz, and near 900MHz it was off by nearly 4 kHz!

Overall, the MkII is much more controlled and does not have the wide excursions seen on the original 8200:
   VHF-lo: 2kHz off
   VHF aero: 1.5kHz off
   VHF-hi: 1.5kHz off
   460s: 2kHz off
   860s: 1.5kHz off
   930s: 2kHz off

Pictures

Then and Now

Antennas

Keypads

Thumbwheels

Can you tell which is which?

PLL Error

Slot Cards

Another problem encountered on my original AR8200 was its inability to effectively use the CTCSS slot card

Once installed, I had hoped to use the card to both search for active tones as well as use known tones to control the squelch

Unfortunately, the AR8200 wasn't about to grant my wishes

The tone search function could almost never determine the tone being used. Put into search mode, I would watch it time after time skip right over the valid tone in it's never ending quest

Since it's ability to register tones appeared to be severely diminished, you can imagine how successful it was at controlling the squelch when programmed to do so on appropriate frequencies

Needless to say I wasn't a happy camper after having doled out $70 for this whiz-bang, technologically advanced slot card. Perhaps I'm being too harsh on the slot card as this faulty operation was most likely a problem with the AR8200

The arrival of the MkII proved that the slot card was indeed blameless

Plugging the green slot card into the base of the black radio brought immediate results...but all is not wedded bliss with this union

Using the tone search function proved that the MkII likes to identify incorrect tones; usually one value below the real one

Unlike radios like the IC-R3, PRO-92 and GRE/Opto boards, the user can not immediately trust the MkII's judgment. A little more work is needed in the searching department to make the final determination

I was pleased that once a tone was programmed into a memory channel, the squelch control worked flawlessly

But you know I always find something to gripe about...

When using tone squelch control, received signals sound radically different since they are passed through filtering for the CTCSS decode process. The result is audio with a very narrow frequency response making it sound like a 15 year-old cordless phone

On a final note, one wonders if the originally green colored slot cards will be changed to black to match the MkII?

HF Performance

One of the larger disappointments of the original AR8200 was its lack of sensitivity on HF. It truly was a poor performer which could not hold a candle to the AR8000 which does happen to be one of the best HF handheld receivers I've used

The first test was to make a sweep of birdies between 0.5 and 30 MHz

13 were detected and contained in three, continuous ranges

7 of these were in the lower part of the AM broadcast band while three each were found around 14.4 and 28.8 MHz (notice the significance of the relationship between those last two numbers)

It was now time to see how the HF reception of the new MkII compared to the original AR8200 and AR8000. In the table that follows, the three radios were compared using the same antenna for each tuned frequency with the results logged from first place to last (with a tie when no discernible difference could be detected)

Freq	MkII	AR8200	AR8000
3	2	3	1
5	1	2	1
10	1	2	1
11	2	2	1
15	2	3	1

The data speaks for itself and it's clear to see that the MkII makes improved gains over the original model but it still isn't up to the standard set by the AR8000

VHF/UHF Performance

Compared to my AR8000, the original AR8200 had almost no birdies but lots of internal noise that got back in through the antenna

Performance on UHF for the AR8200 was usually the same or just a bit less than the AR8000. But as the frequency dropped down into VHF, the AR8000 easily outclassed the AR8200 in almost all test frequencies

Starting with a birdie test, the MkII turns in poorer results with 52 such detected frequencies. While this is far from what would be considered "bad," it is worse than the 14 detected on the AR8200

Luckily, 29 of these birdies fall within the TV bands while 12 more are found above 1 GHz! That leaves 6 on VHF and 5 on UHF!

While at home, I scanned the 25-1300 MHz range for signs of images and intermod using the original AR8200's antenna (for a fair comparison of the results between these two radios)

The results were almost identical with only 4 "problem" frequencies detected above 1GHz carrying TV audio signal images (with all four matching the same signals received on the original AR8200)

Next, it was time to take the MkII into town where I test all receivers when I want to know how they hold up under bombardment from several, locally strong signals from towers in the area carrying FM and TV broadcast, cellular and pager signals

The final tally showed the MkII to have much better rejection with about one fourth the number of "problem" frequencies when compared to the original AR8200!

While the AR8200 had about 45 trouble spots below 800 MHz, the MkII had not a one!

Above 800 MHz, the radios turned in similar results with just a smattering of the usual cell/pager/TV intermod. While results were nearly identical on 800 MHz and above 1 GHz, the MkII showed a few trouble frequencies spread across 900 MHz

It was now time to see how the VHF/UHF reception of the new MkII compared to the original AR8200 and AR8000. In the table that follows, the three radios were compared using the same antenna for each tuned frequency with the results logged from first place to last (with a tie when no discernible difference could be detected)

Freq	MkII	AR8200	AR8000
43	1	2	3
47	1	1	1
59	2	3	1
72	3	2	1
88	1	3	2
98	1	3	2
107	1	3	2
117	2	2	1
124	2	3	1
132	2	2	1
147	2	3	1
155	2	2	1
163	1	2	1
258	1	1	2
308	1	3	2
388	2	3	1
451	2	1	1
453	2	2	1
460	2	1	1
464	2	1	1
853	1	2	1
857	3	2	1
865	2	3	1
936	2	2	1
938	2	3	1

Adding the results and dividing by the number of test frequencies gives us a final ranking of: AR8000 (1.3), MkII (1.7) & AR8200 (2.2)

As we can see, the AR8000 still reigns with the new MkII mid-way between the previous two generations

The MkII shows a noticeable improvement on VHF with some gains made on lower UHF

The final tally sees the MkII stepping up to the challenge much better than its predecessor. Sensitivity is much improved over HF and VHF while dramatic gains have been made in interference rejection

Here's the ranking criteria

Complete Upgrade List

Here's a list of everything that's changed from the original AR8200 as detected in my evaluation:

• New TCXO
• Increased dynamic range
• Telescoping whip antenna
• Brighter backlight
• Increased capacity NiCds
• Increased current drain
• Standard numeric keypad
• Black casing
• New level squelch values
• "Universal" battery compartment
• No "rubber" coating on case
• Key coating changed
• Improved key press feedback
• Lower frequency response audio
• More natural sounding audio

Things I Like

"Everything but the kitchen sink" features

Sensitivity and selectivity

Size

Increased dynamic range

Audio power and quality

Antenna

Battery compartment

Increased NiCd capacity

Better key press feedback

Things I Would Change

CTCSS decoding & audio filtering

Orange lettering on keys

Dedicated backlight key

Miss the rubber coating

Alpha-tag text entry

Fix the PLL Error

4-way rocker switch sensitivity

Bandplan errors on AR8200B model

Summary

By fixing problems associated with the original AR8200, as well as remedying other concerns, AOR has shown the ability to listen to their customer demands and respond accordingly!

They've also once again raised the bar for their competitors and made it even harder than ever before to capture the honor of being ranked as the #1 choice of wideband, handheld receivers

I'm just disappointed that it took them two tries to get the AR8200 where it now is today

While this receiver does carry a very hefty price tag, those willing to pony up the dollars to join the club will find that the price is worth it since no other competitor can match the power and flexibility of this latest technological wonder

That's not to say the AR8200 MkII is perfect. No receiver is

I've pointed out the things I think need changing. While some of them are of lessor importance, some of them, I feel, are expected when one buys a top-of-the-line model

But those willing to step up to the monetary and technological challenges this receiver has to offer will likely add a piece of radio equipment to their shack which will serve them with a lifetime full of radio monitoring exploration, information and excitement! Not to mention making them the envy of every radio enthusiast they come into contact with

Many thanks go to Jonathan of Javiation for supplying the AR8200 MkII used in this review and Glenn of Scanners Unlimited for the short-term loan of an early AR8200B MkII model!

Due to their generosity and steadfast support of our hobby you have the information you need to make an informed purchase. Not something to be taken lightly when you consider the price tag of this full-featured receiver!

June 10, 2000

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Copyright © 2010 by Richard J. Wells