I have a Yaesu VX-7R, am not familiar with the 8R, but:

- its a ham radio, do you have a ham ticket? Otherwise transmitting on most of the available frequencies would be illegal and unavailable to you.
- if you are a ham, you should find out the frequencies used by responding ham organizations, or organizations that utilize ham comms in their response. Ideally you should get involved with them too.
- the 7R picks up commercial frequencies AM/FM just fine, although I think its a little overkill for listening to talk radio, music etc
- no police scanner frequencies that I'm aware of; I sometimes can catch the Washington State Patrol on a non-emergency frequency
- the 7R also has all the local NOAA weather channels, although it has no SAME or EAS capability (don't know, but the 8R probably doesn't have them either).
- the 7R and 8R are both legitimately waterproof and extremely durable, with good-great battery life from my experience. Get a new antenna and an ARRL frequency directory to hook into the local repeater scene.
- I'm not a ham wonk and Yaesu's are notoriously difficult to program. I barely made it through with the ARRL frequency directory software that programmed most of my frequencies for me. (RANT - why the HELL does ham radio insist on being so difficult for new hams?? I'm not talking about getting my ticket from the FCC. Make programming the things easier, and people may use your friggin frequencies for something other than talking about the weather and whatever ham get togethers you attended in the last week.)
- compared to an oregon scientific weather radio: the thing that aggravates me about the OS handheld is it didn't come with a plug in option, so whatever batteries I put in it started draining from the minute I put them in. I much prefer an ETON style weather radio with the windup and solar options, those you can depend on if you need them. I can't even tell you where my Oregon Scientific radio is these days, not a great purchase.

Net net, $400 is alot for a weather radio - it begins to make sense if you also use the 7R/8R for emergency communications with family, friends, or local organizations.