If you live in noise free environment, you will hear much more analog stuff on R8500 than on R8600. That kind of performance goes a long way in the ability to receive things that other receivers cannot under difficult conditions, which are every day around here. I'm sitting here as I type listening to a conversation on 2m with my R8600 and I can key up just 100KHz away with my 100w 2m radio and the R8600 just keeps on receiving, not caring that I'm spanking it hard with a 100w transmitter into an antenna maybe 30ft away. Its done, gone way beyond its design limitations. When you key up another radio your AOR or 8500 will stop receiving. Then fire up another radio, it could be a hand held or base radio maybe a MHz away from where your receiver is listening. Try this with your AOR or near bottom of the list performance R8500, tune in someone on any VHF or UHF band like 2m or 70cm. On the other hand, the Icom R8600 surprises me every time I use it with some new fantastic thing it does over any other wide band radio I've owned. I've had an R8500 here years ago on loan and I'm happy I borrowed it because seeing how it performed at my location saved me from buying one and living with its shortcomings. I've had several AORs and while quite good at some things, when connected to an outside antenna at my house they suck. If that's where you live then thank your lucky stars, because many of us can't get by with low performing radios and have to bump up to something better. Receiver performance is much more than simple sensitivity and my point is even the cheapest receivers can do ok in an environment with with no RF challenges. I live in RF hell that eats cheap radios and spits them out. No reception on the Baofeng, fine reception on all others.
This is with the same antennas on each handheld at the exact same location. Take them all outside with an antenna attached and the Yaesu VX-8R or any other good quality handheld will hear weak distant simplex conversations on 2m just fine, but they don't exist on the Baofeng. The Baofeng measures much better than my $400 Yaesu VX-8R or my Motorola Sabers or my $8,500 Thales handheld and so on. To make a similar comparison, my $25 Baofeng will run circles around most other hand held radios I own when testing sensitivity on a service monitor in that isolated environment with just one signal. The last two comments would relate only to sensitivity and in actual "performance" the R8600 will leave an AOR 9600MKII or the R8500 buried in a pile of dust. So much so that I could not resist buying a 2nd. If Icom would ever cave in and add this mode would be fantastic but I'm not holding my breath that they will ever do it with D-Star being their baby. The only real bummer is the fact the R8600 (as well as all other Icom radio's) is the fact it does not cover the popular DMR digital mode. The R8600s do a fantastic job for all my monitoring from NDB's up to the V\UHF ranges which were my initial interest. Since purchasing the first R8600, my use of the older models has dropped off considerably with the R9000 being the exception. It's used more for sitting on a frequency of interest seeing if it comes alive. I never did get the R9500 but do still use my R9000 near daily here. As you may be aware, the R9000 and its newer brother, the R9500 were both considered some of the best as well but they sure put a dent in your wallet. All good receivers in there day and all are still very useful to this day. As others have pointed out, the measured performance of this receiver is world class across the board.
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