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Nah, the mount is fine. See the review of the Browning BR-173-S commercial land-mobile antenna I just posted. The Browning achieved 1.2:1 SWR at 463 MHz on the same mount. There's a couple of comments in the Midland store reviews of the antenna on Amazon that the antenna comes too short from the factory, so I'm not the only one seeing it resonate above the GMRS band. Again, the resonant point is mount-specific, but if the antenna came a bit longer from the factory, you could cut it to resonate on the GMRS band for a wider range of mounting configurations. Maybe the MXTA26 is factory cut to be resonant on the GMRS bands for center-of-roof placement on a Midland NMO mag mount? That's a pretty limited configuration, though. Many people will use a NMO antenna on a front fender or rear trunk/hatchback/tire rack mount these days, even though the NMO 3/4 inch hole mount was originally designed for center-of-roof placement.

Makes sense... For now, my major concern is mostly during local area commute... Usually keep two REACT repeaters in my HT just in case... My major driver to get GMRS was for local comms, but definitely good to know options for emergency purposes!

You could add an external power amplifier. But why? Unlike CB, and low-band ham radio, where power can significantly affect range, UHF is limited pretty much by line of sight and terrain will usually stop signal propagation well before power becomes an issue,. If you have a specific communications problem you are trying to solve, power might possibly be the answer. But, as a general rule going from 10 to 50 watts just won't buy you very much. If range is really important, start looking into different antenna options.

Well there are really two issues here. One is cheap labor. Second is cheap design. You can still move manufacturing back to the US and still produce garbage because the design was cheap. The CCR's are the way they are because of both of the above factors. Cheap labor keeps cost down. A cheap design that takes maximum advantage of highly integrated chips which very often results in a compromise somewhere in performance with a trade off in reduced cost. Now you have a really cheap radio with so-so performance. There is a reason why the higher end radios perform better, cost more, than many CCR's is because more effort was made during the design and testing phase with less corners in performance cut. To design high performance hardware requires very careful evaluation of nearly every component used. For a $25 Baofeng just how much R and D money do you think they are going to spend on such a cheap radio? For the CCR's they use a "datasheet" reference design, tweak it a bit. Then try some "can you hear me now tests" and then it goes to marketing.

... or ANY non-GMRS certified radio for that matter. None, zero, zilch, zip, nada, rien, никто. Nobody should buy or operate any radio they are not comfortable with. Whether it is for technical or regulatory reasons. But, this board is made up of adults who, like you, are, presumably, capable of deciding for themselves what equipment they wish to own, operate, and discuss.