Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This unit has the look and feel of the lovechild of a mall RadioShack and an Ace Hardware store. The wand is PVC water pipe, with a PVC pipe cap for alpha-screening. The cap is a poor friction fit. Easily pulls off when removing the wand from the unit (which is difficult due to the stupid conduit bracket it uses to attach). If you took this unit to the field, you can easily drop this PVC cap and either lose it, or worse - contaminate it, and by proxy, contaminate the GM tube. The alpha-mesh appears it has been cut with a scissors, and melted onto the PVC wand, as if someone heated the mesh red hot, and pressed the plastic wand onto it to bond them. At the level of precision it is a stretch to call this a scientific instrument. The device enclosure is the same boring gray plastic 1980's computer keyboards had. Openings in the case appear hand-cut. Colors and text you see are vinyl stickers. The fit around the LCD is very poor, looks like someone dremel'ed it, inconsistent gaps. Port openings on the side appear hand reamed, similarly inconsistent, and oversize to sockets, meaning gaping holes for water, dust and other contaminants can easily penetrate the unit. It is not ergonomic. At the size of a 8-inch tablet, and is heavy, it requires both hands, making it complicated to manipulate the samples. It has big toggle switches that can easily be bumped. The probe connector is flimsy and has a lot of leverage to the socket. If you drop it, either the toggles or the probe socket or both will break. It does not come with any kind of protective case - considering you will definitely need one, add that to the price. I understand the advantages of having a detachable probe. But you will attract a lot of attention if you go to shopping with this thing and start scanning food like some king of vegetable news reporter. Speaking of scanning food, the GM tube in this thing is of mediocre performance. We have taken this unit to an Asian store to scan seaweed from Japan. After Fukushima, this particular sample is known to be radioactive. Radiation can be read even without removing the plastic packaging. Sample seaweed reads 0.4 uSv/Hr as opposed to 0.08 background, measured with pancake GM probe on a much more expensive professional unit. With this unit's probe did not pick up anything above the background. We also tried measuring radiation from cigarettes with this unit (easily measurable with professional equipment) and it could not register any. It is thus useless for weak sources (and weak sources are the ones you need worry about the most). It has no capability to record radiation, so you have to lug around a computer with you if you want to record over time. It comes with a software for PC logging, yeah ... but the software is we-had-that-summer-intern-write-it-7-years-ago level buggy. And finally, battery life is nothing to brag about. Low battery warning comes on in 48 hours of continuous use. Professional units have battery lives that last several years of continuous use.