So, after my Zodiac failed me — and I discovered that it has more than one name — I bought an Icom IC-M94D. Icom is supposed to be one of the top brands, and Icom IC-M94D is the first hand held VHF with built in AIS receiver.
Sadly, IC-M94D had two major annoyances which made me return it. I may have been unlucky, but if that is the case, I was unlucky twice; because I tested two different units.
Annoyance 1 — Dual watch stuttering
Compared to my old Zodiac Seacom 150, the IC-M94D stuttered more when using dual watch. I usually listen to a selected channel for traffic information, and have channel 16 on dual watch.
I did a test with my watch and found out that when there is talk on the selected channel, it switches quickly to channel 16 to listen if there is traffic there every 1.5 second. This is quick enough to make it hard to understand what is being said. On the Zodiac, this switch happened every 3 seconds, which is much easier to listen to.
Annoyance 2 — Static noise
On top of the first annoyance, if I listen to a selected channel without dual watch, there is a lot of static noise each time someone press or releases PPT (push-to-talk).
So if a VTS (Vessel Traffic Service) and a ship is talking with each other, each time one of them press or release the PPT button, there is a half a second long static noise. And it is loud, and it is not possible to remove with the built in noise canceling.
Static noise in combination with the dual watch stutter made this VHF useless for me.
Conclusion
I returned the Icom IC-M94D, but had to pay a fee to have it checked and reset the MMSI number, which was a bit annoying itself, since I think none of the two units I tested worked as one would expect.
On the bright side, I managed to fix my old Zodiac Seacom 150 afterwards.