Andrei

yes, that was my mistake: I had assumed that the used testing unit they sent me was, actually, really tested. My bad. I will learn that lesson!

Exactly! So, for context, the first KG-Q10G I ordered had a defective GPS receiver. When I contacted BuyTwoWayRadios (not BetterSafeRadio!) they told me that they could not exchange the unit because they were sold out. They offered to send me a used unit which was given to them by Wouxun to test. I agreed. Tried the GPS - it was slow (not a real GNSS chip) and had a pretty bad design, but I did not really care. What I did not do is double-triple-check that the Channel Wizard did work properly. I got no error messages of any kind. However, much later, I did notice that for some reason, I could not hit some repeaters. So I sat down and tested it fully. I found out that others had the same problem, so I found a workaround: use the Wizard as indicated, then manually fix the frequency. I worked in IT long enough to know that code does not degrade over time, at least not by itself and for no reason. So I contacted BTWR again and asked them about it, and they told me that they never heard of any issues with the wizard and offered me to send them the radio for testing. That is when I told them that my model was already an exchange of a new for an old one. They replied "Oh that's interesting. Can you provide me that order number?" and when I did and suggested either an exchange or a rebate for my purchase of a brand new one. Why? 1) because that code error was not due to time passing, it was always there, I just spotted it too late and 2) I can still use the KG-Q10G even with a buggy wizard. Their reply was simply "there ain't nothing we can do, it is out of warranty". I had mistakenly assumed that finding out that the radio I had was a used radio sold to me for the full price, that would entice them to try a tiny bit harder. Instead it showed them the out of warranty date and they were done with that. I was naive, I admit. Now here is why I decided to ditch them: I did not demand or expect a new unit, and certainly not for free. But I did think that since they sent me a used unit to begin with (and sold me a defective unit originally) they would provide at least some kind of support. That is, after all, why BuyTwoWayRadios are advertised as "we are in Murica!! We offer Murican customer support, not that frustrating Chinese one!". LOL! You put it best (even if you confused the sellers): BTWR are "just a vendor" for a Chinese product. They offer exactly ZERO extra value. Once the Chinese warranty is done, so are these good Murican boys. That is my problem with them. That attitude. Some may like it. I don't have to! By the way, I had a similar problem with a Meshtastic device from Rokland and they immediately agreed to giving me a rebate for the purchase of new gear (by that time, mine was also out of warranty). So there are sellers out there which give you true extra value. And since I get go to BSR or another US seller (or even order from China or any other country, I have done that many times), I am happy with the outcome: I have a workaround and plenty of sellers to go to in the future. And if some "sad posters" think that a condescending tone is a substitute for expertise or if they think that BTWR does a stellar job giving us extra value, by all means, enjoy! From now on their "insightful comments" will go to my /dev/null I cannot say that this thread has been great fun, so I think that I am done, let the "sad posters" keep share their immense wisdom with anybody but me! Cheers

yes, I figured you might but, no worries, you will get more radios to review from them, you've definitely earned it! thank God for the "ignore" option

yes, you missing the fact that you are arguing against a strawman (look it up).

yup, that matches my experience too.

why would I want to get any of these? more relevantly, what's it to you? you work for BTWR or just a fan of that store? speaking of the KG-935G - BTWR did a botched job on its NOAA channel, so they later release the KG-935Plus, but not as an exchange, but an full price upgrade. I know, I have both of these radios clearly, BTWR, and you, apparently, think that they are a monopoly. They ain't! But if a lot of their customer base does indeed believe that they are, yet another solid reason for me to go elsewhere.

No, but I will go to vendors who try to help even with a radio is out of guarantee. I have had good experiences so far with BetterSafeRadio and their latest KG-UV9GX+ looks rather sexy (see here: https://bettersaferadio.com/wouxun-kg-uv9gx-plus-gmrs-radio-shtf-scanner). And there are other vendors and distributors out there. There are always options even if BTWR think that they are irreplaceable

As promised, I am posting the reply I got from BTWR: "Unfortunately, you're radio is no longer under warrantee so there's not much I can do for you regarding a replacement." I don't think that I will purchase more radios from them.

I also had some mixed experiences with Wouxun and BTWR. For example, their KG-935G had a terrible implementation of the NOAA weather alerts. Then they released their KG-935G Plus. The initial model was a beta release and the "plus" version the final product. I am curious what they will tell me this time around. I will make sure to let you know here. Cheers!

excellent idea! will do, thank you

yup, that is what I ended up doing. if I get a reply from B2WR I will post it here. in my case, they were gone for the weekend can't really blame them, can I? Anyway, we will see what they will say. I wonder if they can update the firmware... another useless and stupid reply. I often wonder what motivates folks to post such rude and condescending posts, and all I can think of is that their wives must beat them and so they try to pass on that beating through their posts. either that, or these are insecure teenagers trying to sound adult. either way, what a waste of perfectly good bits...

thank you! I emailed BuyTwoWayRadios so I hope to hear from them next week. I also found a roundabout way to fix what appears to be a bug in the "channel wizard": I used the long press on the TDR button to manually change the frequency back to its original state. If I do that manually, the correct frequency is stored. have a great week end!

that would be 4 in a row.

that would be 3 useless posts. is that really your best?

and neither are your two comments. Is that how you got your "grand master" rank, by posing useless replies?

they told me that they were off for the week-end. do you now approve of me posting a question here or would you have more questions for me?

Hi I am trying to program a repeater into my Wouxun KG-Q10G and I use the channel wizard to do so. First, I select "repeater", then, next, RX-FREQ which is 462.650. then the TX-CTCSS (with a tone) TX-DCS (left on "off") then the RX-CTCSS (with the same tone), RX-DCS (left on "off"), TX-POWER, CH-NAME, CH-NUM and the, finally, the SAVE MODE which I select "SAVE END". And everything works perfectly. Until I switch off the radio and then back on. When turned back on, all the setting remain correct except one, the RX-FREQ which drops down from the correct 462.650 down to 462.550! What am I doing wrong? Thank you for any pointers. 73!

I am sorry you are having reading difficulties. But thank you for letting us know!

Intro: I called this review a newbie’s review because the Choyong LC90 is the first Internet radio I have ever used. None of my previous radios (Malahit DSP3, Belka DX Max, Tecsun PL-990, ATS120Pro) had any Internet capability, so for me this was a double discovery, the discovery of the Choyong LC90 itself and of Internet radio in general. The closest I ever came to using Internet radio was to use the excellent “ShortWave” application for GNU/Linux (which uses the “Radio Browser” online database), which I like very much and which I will compare to the LC90 to try to answer a simple question: what is the point of an Internet radio when pretty much any modern communication device can stream radio music anyway? Does that LC90 add anything of value to the existing software solutions? I did watch several videos on YouTube about the LC90, and I read a few reviews and I was still unconvinced. So I emailed Choyong and asked them 4 questions about what their radio could or could not do, I got a detailed reply very quickly. I was impressed, and so I decided to offer Choyong to use me as a tester. While reading about that radio online, many mentioned the huge improvement the new firmware version (4.7 ) had over the previous one, so I decided to also purchase a LC90M (or “mini” with the older firmware version 4.6) to compare the two radio and, most importantly, see what the new firmware did or did not fix, improve or add. I was not disappointed to say the least, so in the past weeks I have been testing both devices (though here I will focus on the LC90 with firmware 4.7) and I decided to write a review by a newbie and (mainly) for other newbies who might not be sure if the LC90 is worth their money or not. You will find that review below. ------- Hardware: The hardware is superb, the sound is excellent, the buttons well-positioned and easy to use. Here my point of comparison is, obviously, the Tecsun PL-990. Externally, the radios look similar, the LC90 is a little bit bigger and has a much more advanced color screen which can even be seen in direct sunlight. Opening the box and looking at the radio for the first time, I immediately had a strong feeling of “this is high end radio”. It literally “radiates” quality! The radio ships in a quite beautiful box and Choyong also offers an optional bag which is almost the same as the one the Tecsun PL-990 ships and which I recommend you purchase if you get the LC90. Some users have complained that the external antenna and/or jack ports are too close to the turning knobs, but I disagree (the reason for this configuration is that the LC90 has a real speaker cabinet to improve the sound, so this seems a good call to me). Still, including a small and cheap adapter (to SMA and BNC) would appease those who have a problem. I do regret that that radio does not have a support in the back allowing it to be placed in a 45 degree angle like, again, the Tecsun PL-990. This is both a “desktop radio” and a “travel radio” (it might well be the ideal travel radio – see below) and in that latter capacity, it really would benefit from such a little kick out stand in the back. Volume wise and sound wise I compared the Choyong LC90 to the Tecsun PL-990 and I would argue that they both have absolutely superb sound. That is a 10 out of 10 for both radios. Firmware: The two card slots at the bottom work well, though I only tested the TF but not the SIM card. The TF card (maximum 32GB, mine came with a 16GB SD card which is more than enough) can be used to store music and then use the LC90 as an mp3 player. Including a TF card was a very good idea. Without it, some users would have to wait to update the firmware which can be frustrating when something does not “work out of the box”. One problem in the TF menu is that while it does show the folders on the SD card, it does not show the various songs inside the folder. I am confident that this will be easy to correct in future firmware options The SIM card can be used to stream directly to the radios from 4G celltowers, the radio even supports eSIM cards! By the way, Choyong has a very useful YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@choyongradio) where, amongst many other helpful videos, the use of an eSIM is explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEwrt5Hy1nQ. Since I had never even heard of eSIMs, I found that info most helpful. I did not test a SIM or an eSIM card but I did use my cellphone as a hotspot and, the bandwidth used is not a problem at all: in spite of my cellphone showing only 2 bars, this did not slow down the radio. Thus in order to work properly the LC90 does not need a fast data connection or a lot of bandwidth. Speaking of connectivity, I had zero problems. I think that it is worth mentioning here the reason for the comparatively slow connection process at bootup: each time the radio powers up, not only does it connect to the local WiFi like any other device, it also queries the Choyong database in China to download the list of radios available. Also, it appears that the initial bootup does not download the entire database, but only part of it and then you have to search through the many thousands (40+k, I think) radio stations, the unit sometimes seems to need a few seconds to reconnect to the Choyong servers and download the next packet of data. I personally find this reasonable and it does not bother me. I can only think of two ways to accelerate this process: 1) a full database download, but that would possibly require an increase in the data storage capacity of the unit or 2) create “mirrors” for the Choyong database in a few locations, say in the USA, EU, Russia and Brazil. Since I have no idea of the bandwidth needed to deal with incoming connections this might or might not be a good idea. The only bug/feature is the erroneous message “network error” when, in reality, the radio is downloading data from the servers. Speaking of bugs, I also got a few “your dataplan is over” (or something alone these lines), but a few quick presses on the “c” (as in cancel) button took care of that. I generally like the menu system (much improved from 4.6 to 4.7) even if some of the subcategories are confusing (music, news, national stations, etc.) and even if some radios have duplicate entries (see below). Now I am going to mention my first major complaint: the radio lists in the menu are not arranged alphabetically. In fact, I don’t see any order of any kind, so when I go to Europe→Russia→ Music I can have up to 600 stations to browse through and their order makes no sense to me. Keep in mind that each (virtual) “page” in the menu has only 4 lines for 4 entries max. So in order to scan through the 600 music stations one must flip through 150 “pages”! And since during the scrolling through searches, the radio must download more stations from the server, this further slows down the search. Also, some menus are not “wrap around” meaning that if you are on line 1 of page 1 you cannot rotate the knob “upwards” and get to the 4th entry on page 600. It might be simpler to classify all the stations by alphabetically by country and then alphabetically by station name, especially if a faster knob rotating speed can be added in the next firmware (slowly station by station, faster page by page, even faster +50 or something along these lines) This might be due to the fact that each user can not only go to the (very well made!) website to manage one radio’s stations (including the capability of using several radios and synchronizing them). This process is very well designed: you create an account, then you upload a specific number code (which you can find in the “settings” section) and that identifies your specific radio(s) to the server. However, since not all uploading users will enter the streaming data of the station they want to add in exactly the same way, this results in both inconsistencies and duplicates. Also, some stations are clearly deliberately misidentified. Say, a station which claims to be Russian or Iranian is, in reality, a propaganda outlet engaged in classical PSYOPs while impersonating the very country they try to subvert. Frankly, unless somebody (or maybe an IA) goes with a fine comb through each uploaded stream data, this will be very hard to counter-act. So yes, even GITMO is listed under “Cuba”. I do want to stress however, that this might be the lesser of two evils because if anybody (especially an AI) gets to rearrange entries or even remove duplicates that person (or AI) will essentially have the power of censorship, so maybe the current “chaos” is the price to pay for true diversity of opinions? The selection of stations currently offered is simply huge, even exotic countries and territories are represented. Of course, some streams appear “dead” but that can be explained by at least two reasons 1) the station is not streaming and 2) the user made a mistake entering the station info. Finally, local governments can block specific stations. Speaking of AI and firmwares. Many people noted that the voice to text recognition on the firmware 4.6 was bad. True, it is truly awful and, frankly, useless. I am happy to report that firmware 4.7 is a huge improvement since it includes ChatGPT’s voice recognition which, while not perfect, is very good and is a massive improvement over firmware 4.6. I have tested the speech search in several languages (English, Russian, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch) and some languages are better than others, but all in all this pretty works well. By the way, the very well made (and even backlit!) keyboard does not have characters, so you cannot enter a search by name, and I hope that future firmware version will include this feature. Still, if you cannot use voice recognition, cannot use characters on a keyboard and if you don’t feel like doom-scrolling through many hundreds of stations, you always have the options of doing your searches on the Choyong website and then simply press one button to 1) make your addition available to all Choyong users and 2) immediately add that station to your device(s) with a click of a button. This all works very well. Here is a YouTube video which shows how all this works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ewf4OXfY98. Alternatively, this Choyong video shows how to do that with any cellphone: https://youtu.be/-f5l8MiUeEo. Before looking into FM/SW/MV/LW/SSB performances, I would like to revisit the issue which kept me for so long from getting this (or any other) Internet radio: What is the point of an Internet radio anyway? For me, this was my biggest surprise. I was quite happy streaming my favorite radio station on my cellphone (via browser) or on my computers (via the Shortwave app mentioned above) and I was quite dubious about the very concept of shelling out money to get a piece of hardware which would do no more than my software already could do? Boy was I mistaken! So, for those who have the same doubts, I want to include a few words about why such a device actually makes perfectly good sense even if you can stream online stations in many other ways. I will list what surprised (and impressed) me most on this device: The immense selection of radios. Yes, yes, I know, I can go to several websites and find all sorts of radios streaming. But now I can very quickly search for truly exotic stations which I would never ever hear on SW (say the station Rincòn Gaucho from Argentina or Ataman FM from Russia). In practical terms, if in the past I used to listen to maybe 5-6 radio stations, now my “favorite list” includes well over 60 entries from all over the world Next, even in its current state (firmware 4.7) the radio management is very well organized. Online streaming is fine for a few stations, but if you want to quickly find out what the news out of, say, Malaysia or Equatorial Guinea you can do that is seconds. Furthermore, Choyong has made a risky but superb choice by allowing not only search by country, it also allows search by region but also by “music” stations “news” stations, “podcast” stations and even “other stations”. You can also search through an excellent list of sixty (!) tags which are too many to list, suffice to say that 1) they cover a lot 2) they are still not quite logically organized, but over time, this will probably be fixed in future firmwares. There are also three buttons for “music”, “podcast” and “news” on the keyboard. Confusing? A little. Redundant? Not really, it is simply a different path to finding more stations. Sound: The radio comes with three internal speakers, a real speaker cabinet and a sound that no cellphone or laptop will ever match. The entire listening experience is totally different. Mobility: can you quickly toss your cellphone or laptop into a bag, or bring them to another room? Would you bring you laptop or even a decent speaker to a hike? Last, but most definitely not least, does your cellphone or laptop come with FM/SW/MW/LW/SSB? As far as I know, the Choyong is the first and still only company to offer a top of the line Internet radio with a huge growth potential and world class hardware combined with a full (and quite good, see below) “regular” radio! So now let’s look at the “real” radio inside the LC90: First, a note: I did all my testing and comparisons using the telescopic antenna, I did not use any external antennas at all as this would massively complicate comparisons. Performance on FM: My first impression of the FM mode was overall pretty good. Not only that, but the RDS works very well and displays lots of useful info. The sound quality is superb, the scan option quick and easy. Having said that, the sensitivity is average at best. Still, the FM reception would probably be good enough for most users. The LC90 won’t beat a Qodosen DX-286 in terms of sensitivity or a Belka in selectivity, but that was never a goal for Choyong. Thus even the Tecsun PL-900 beats the LC90 on FM. This, however, changes with SW: Performance on SW in AM and SSB modes: I was very impressed with the ATS in SW which returned the same number of stations as my Tecsun PL-990 (albeit some stations were different). I did notice that sometimes the ATS already stores a nearby frequency and also the correct one. So, say, if the frequency 12330 is detected but the sound is not perfect, the next stored station is already 12335, which is that stations correct frequency. Maybe the selectivity is not “narrow” enough? When I searched manually I found the SW performance rock solid. I personally did not hear any “birdies”. I did hear a silence when turning the frequency button, and I am not sure if this is due to the hardware only storing specific frequencies or due to a tuning mute, but I really do not like that and I hope that future firmware updates will resolve this The band width control works very smoothly and effectively. To my surprise, I found that the SSB performance was very decent, and the fine tuning knob worked very well. Again, it is not in the same league as a hyper-specialized Belka DX Max, but it a very solid performer on SSB, which is very impressive (that only applies to the 4.7 firmware version). Performance on MW/LW: Frankly, I only quickly tested these wavelengths because I am not interested in them (listening to MW or LW in Florida is not the most thrilling experience to say the least). I read several reviews who say that the performance of the LC90 on MW/LW got somewhat better with the 4.7 firmware, but since I have nothing to compare this to, I decided to skip this entirely. Performance in the Bluetooth mode: I had no problems connecting my phone and streaming music from my phone to the radio. When connecting an external BT device the sounds is excellent and the connection solid. However, I did not find a way to stream from the radio to another, bigger, Bluetooth speaker. Bottom line – is the LC90 for you or not? Clearly, the LC90 is not a DXing radio. It was never intended as such anyway. A a Toyota Landcruiser is a great off-road car, but would be a terrible Formula 1 racing car. Likewise, a real F1 car would be terrible off-road and you could not even have a passenger or go shopping with it. I think that the LC90 is like a Toyota Land Cruiser: extremely good at some things (in our case Internet Radio where the LC90 truly shines), very good at some other things (SW, radio station management, discovering new stations, etc.), good at other things (FM), decent in some aspects (TF music, SSB) and not the very best in some specific niches (MW, LW). What a consumer needs to look at is not one hyper-specialized feature, but at the value of the full package, and from that point of you the LC90 truly is an exceptionally good radio! Wishes for the future: A totally reworked user manual. The current one is good, but it leaves too much guessing for the users, especially those new to radios and Internet streaming. I know that Choyong has a very good YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@choyongradio)with tons of information, but a lot of people will never find it, or like it very much (especially the older generation). Besides, the LC90 has so many undocumented options and features (and the LC100 will probably have more) that a real, printed, user manual would really be helpful for a lot of people. I think that Choyong should commission a new, detailed, high quality manual in Chinese and then have it translated to English, Russian and Spanish (around 45% of the world's population speaks at least one of these four languages). That being said, I would definitely keep and continue to develop the YouTube channel as there are definitely users who would prefer that. I would also include a QR code to the channel and the Choyong website in the user manual. Now for a few more assorted wishes for the future: The ability to record and store ideally, the way the ShortWave app does: it constantly and automatically stores 10 different songs and give you the time of, well, 10 songs to make a decision: do I want to keep this or not? This is much better than simply pressing a “record” button and simply record all that comes through the speaker (including half as song you like because you missed the beginning or, if you press “stop” too late, have another song “attached” to the one you liked) if song #10 is not recorded, it is then purged and the entire stack moves down by one – very convenient design!). This way you always miss the first song you tune to (unless you catch the very beginning) but after than, you never lose a song you want to keep. A waterfall display on that superb color screen would be absolutely terrific. The podcasts menu does not offer the option to chose a specific podcast date. As best I can tell, you only get the latest podcast you selected, but there is no way to listen to past shows. The handbag is very nice and I would include it with every radio sold along with SMA and BNC adapters. I find the shutdown confusing. By rotating the volume button the radio goes into sleeping more and a press of the red button starts the radio. But I have not find a combination of buttons to avoid an accidental switch-on (say in a suitcase). I think that the LC90 needs a double-press or some other kind of mechanism to truly lock the radio. Adding the capability to stream directly to an external (fullsize) Bluetooth speaker stereo or even a car speaker would be great. Something to consider: either a remote control or an Android/iOS/HarmonyOS app making it possible to change stations, modes, etc. That is definitely not needed, but some users might really like it (C. Crane offers it on their CC WiFi 3 Internet Radio) Include the possibility to use ATS in the USB/LSB modes. Improve the SW selectivity in AM mode. Eliminate the tuning mute on SW. On the Choyong website page “create new (station)” to manually add radio streams, include the option to check (or not) whether the radio stream includes commercial interruptions or not.

I have both of these, but the KG-935G had bugs with the weather alert feature, so that is why they had to come up with the KG-935G Plus which has these bugs fixed. But yes, this is a superb radio. I am just looking for something cheapo to toss in a bag when hiking/kayaking in the Florida boonies. TIDRADIO came up with exactly that, the MD-11, it is dirt cheap (no biggie if you drop it while kayaking), it is IP65, and it has NOAA RX capability, but no alerts and that is something rather helpful with hiking the FL Cypress swamps and forests.

Well, you are a true man's man, a tough nature conquering hero whose eloquence and perspicacity, I am sure, will amaze everybody! Bravo, Sir, and thank you for your insightful comment!

Hi, I am looking for a cheap GMRS HT with an IP rating of 65 (or better) and with NOAA alerts (as opposed to the ability to listen to NOAA channels). So far, only Wouxun KG-935G Plus does that very well, but it is pricey and somewhat heavy. The same is true of my Wouxun KG-Q10G. I also have the Btech GMRS Pro, which does that pretty well, except that a weather alert triggers an extremely loud sound which is not controllable (I asked them, they have no intention of fixing that in their firmware. My dream receiver (for this purpose) would be something like the (fantastic) TIDRADIO MD-11 but with weather *alerts* as opposed to just the RX of channels. Can you recommend such a model? Thanks for any pointers!

It is hard to compare. The KG-Q10G is a very good radio, superhet, high IP, etc. I did not compare them in any halfway serious way, but I would say that I did not notice any difference, but that does not mean much, since I did not take the time to test them on sensitivity/selectivity. I can't imagine that the hardware under the hood of the H3 would be as good as the one on the KG-Q10G, but that is just my "you get what you pay for" thing kicking in. Hopefully a better tester than myself might give you a better reply!

I discovered the company TIDRADIO when I purchased their H8 model which, as many of you know, had some very real problems but, to the surprise of many, TIDRADIO not only did not deny the problems but, instead, they tried really hard to listen to their customers and they fixed the problems which were reported. It took them two attempts, but they eventually succeeded. Not only that, but they replaced the early production models with fixed ones, at no cost to the client. Many, including myself, were very impressed with how TIDRADIO turned what could have been a major problem into a major success. Clearly, TIDRADIO listened and swiftly acted to correct the issues identified. I was so impressed by not only the company, but also by the H8 model which came packed with superb capabilities, especially for an extremely competitive price, that I contacted TIDRADIO and offered to beta-test their pre-production models. TIDRADIO quickly and kindly agreed and sent me their latest H3 which I shall review below. The TIDRADIO H3 and H8 As you can tell from the photo above, the H3 very much looks like the “smaller brother of the H8”. But that would not at all be fair to the H3 which, while being amazingly small, packs a lot of awesome features. But let’s begin with one of the features which made TIDRADIO HTs so popular: both the H8 and the H3 offer three different boot-up modes: GMRS, HAM and “unlocked”. Just to clarify, each time you change the boot-up mode, you are doing a factory reset, so if you program your radio in one mode and then boot up in a different mode, all your changes will be lost. There is, of course, an easy workaround here. Two in fact: if you use the CHIRP free and open source software or the ODMASTER app and website, you can quite easily copy your frequencies/channels into the memory banks of the H3 (which has 199 memory slots, more than enough, at least for me). Both the H8 and the H3 can also be programmed by Bluetooth using the ODMASTER app. Both CHIRP and ODMASTER offer access to repeater databases, but for me the best results were achieved by using the “query→repeaterbook” option in CHIRP. [Note: I have found it helpful to, after I am done with CHIRP, to also connect to the radio with the ODMASTER app just to double-check some buggy aspects of CHIRP which, for examples, messed up my TX power settings when cloned back to the radio. One simple “read” in ODMASTER followed by a single “write” fixed that issue for me] I should mention here that the H8 and H3 have different RX/TX capabilities: H8: 144-148 & 420-450MHz (TX) and 76-108 MHz (FM Broadcast Radio); 136-174 & 400-520MHz (RX) H3: 8 Band Receiving: ( FM )50-76MHz; ( AM )76-108MHz; 108-136MHz; ( VHF ) 136-174MHz; 174-350MHz; 350-400MHz; ( UHF ) 400-470MHz; 470-600MHz and 2 Band Transmitting: ( VHF )144-148MHz; ( UHF )420-450MHz The fact is that while both the H8 and the H3 have the same transmitting capabilities, the H3 comes with a galore of extra frequencies, including Airband! So, as you can tell already, the H3 is hardly a “little” brother to the H8 but a very capable radio in its own right. While the radio is small, which is a big advantage and very convenient, it also feels very solid and well built. All the buttons function smoothly and having them backlit keyboard is a very good choice. The only suggestion I have would be to change the color of the characters on the buttons from white on blue to bright yellow over blue as that would make it easier to read the characters. The battery has a very long life time and fits very snugly into the radio. The stock antenna seems to be of a very decent quality and it is well built. The sound of the speaker is very good. No problems here. The choice of a single top rotating power switch/volume control, a flashlight and two indicators is a very good layout, I just wish the knob was a little stiffer to rotate. The flashlight itself seems decent, but the light is too widely dispersed and should be better focused by a better lens. The H3 does not have any IP rating, but it seems very well built. Don’t go swimming with it, but it should fare just fine in light rain, dust or sand (especially if you cover the two USB-C port with a small plastic plug). I was unable to test the USB-C programming slot. While CHIRP could “see” the H3 when I used a regular programming cable, I could not get my computer to “see” the radio when connected to the internal USB-C programming slot. This might be a GNU/Linux specific issue, I don’t know. The USB-C charging, however, works very well. As I mentioned, the ability to boot into different modes is a true “killer feature” which I hope all future TIDRADIO radios will retain. I did most of my testing in the “normal” (unlocked) mode but I tested booting up in GMRS and that works very well. I tested the Odmaster and CHIRP programming with the H3 (using Android and GNU/Linux) and I have had zero problems. Both applications work really well (though in my case, only when using a regular programming cable). The ability to copy and paste between various modes (HAM to GMRS or GMRS to HAM) allows the user to configure the radio to exactly his needs. The user manual is well written and the radio’s menu system works well, but there are 3 menu items which are missing from the user manual: #52 (200 TX) #53 (350TX) AND #54 (500TX).I also suggest that option #34 (frequency hopping) should be given an explanation on how to use it and what to use it for. I find the implementation of the AM mode clumsy. Why not have it immediately activated when on the airband? The “selective scan frequency” is still very “raw”. For example, the frequency scanner seems to start on the last frequency it detected. This is not good. I also hope that future software updates will add an option to give the scanner a starting frequency. The FM radio is adequate, but it has zero ability to scan. When scanning in the FM mode, I could not get it to detect a single FM radio station. So the current firmware still could use some fixing, and I am confident that TIDRADIO will fix these issues in future updates. I admit being very impressed by the H3 which is among my top favorite radios which, considering its price, is a huge achievements. The H3 currently sells for $39.99 on Amazon. For comparison, my Wouxun KG-935G Plus now costs $149.99, my Btech GMRS Pro cost $154.89, my Wouxun KG-UV9GX $187 and my Wouxun KG-Q10G now sells for a whopping $219.99 (and it has at least as many bugs as the H3 including a basically useless GPS receiver). FYI, the 2nd Gen TIDRADIO TD-H8 now sells for $69. So for 110 bucks, you can get both the TIDRADIO H8 and the TIDRADIO H3! Then I want to return to the form factor: the H3 is really very small, fits in a pocket, yet it is very strong, it has this solid quality feel, and the color screen is superb and very well designed. And while the H3 is both smaller and cheaper than any of my other radios, it is the one I mostly carry around. Could the H3 be improved upon? I think so. First, it would need to be made “outdoors” compatible, which means a decent IP rating and a GNSS chip: the Wouxun KG-Q10G only have a GPS chip, the Btech Pro has a chip which can receive both GPS and Beidou signals, which is better, but still not the full GNSS (which combines GPS+GLONASS+Beidou+Galileo). Nowadays GNSS chips are cheap and small, and the first HAM/GMRS radio featuring a real GNSS chip would have an immense advantage over all its competitors (much faster acquisition and much superior precision). All in all, the H3 is an absolutely fantastic radio with a huge potential and TIDRADIO/ODMASTER are a company which tries really hard to offer very capable radios at unbeatable prices. I can definitely recommend both the H8 and, especially, the H3.

Thank you all for your answers!!