Spy Review

The Icom R2 is the baby brother of the Icom R3 (audio and video scanner), and only receives audio. However it is a great radio scanner in a very small package, doing exactly what its designed to do. It’s perfect as an audio surveillance receiver, since it has specifications that were only available in top-end and expensive models a few years ago.

The Icom R2 has been replaced by the Icom R5 in recent years with some updated and improved features. I myself have had an Icom R2 for about 6 years with absolutely no problems at all, and had no need to upgrade to the Icom R5. You can still get an Icom R2 on eBay for around £70 ($140), or the updated R5 for around £180 ($360). Both prices are very cheap in scanner standards, given the features that they pack.

The reason why this makes such a good surveillance receiver is due to the bandwidth coverage of the device. It receives frequencies in the range of 150kHz to 1.3GHz with no gaps, which is not common. Therefore it can receive virtually all analogue audio signals (AM and FM) in the common transmitter range. So VHF bugs, UHF bugs and even baby listener devices too!

Before you ask, it does not intercept modern mobile phones (cell-phones to our US friends). This is because mobile phones now use digital signals. Please forgive my simplistic overview, but I’ll briefly explain why. Modern mobile phones encode the audio signal as bits and bytes before transmitting them to the nearest cell mast for transport on the phone networks. The digital signal is then decoded for the traditional telephone wired network. The digital signals can not be heard without decoding by some very clever and expensive equipment (several hundred thousand pounds worth). The old mobile phones could be intercepted by a scanner when they used analogue signals, but this was around 7 years ago before things started changing.

The Icom R2 runs from 2xAA batteries, and the Icom R5 runs from rechargable batteries (which it is supplied with). The Icom R5 also comes with memory bank cloning via USB, high speed scanning and extra memory banks for storing pre-set frequencies. Both devices are superb, and I would definitely recommend adding one to your surveillance tool box!