Baofeng UV-50X3

[gman1971]

If you're buying this radio for GMRS b/c of the fancy bells and whistles, just don't. My experience (as a former Baofeng addict) is to look elsewhere. While the radio might have a very palatable price tag, with a fancy color screen, twenty bands, customizable button sounds, roger beeps, voice echo, recording of 1000 hours, whatever, etc, the RF performance will be, like most of the cheap Chinese junk, inadequate, (for the lack of a more blunt word) ...  That's their tactic, they can't compete with the US/European/Japanese made radios in the RF performance game (which is the thing that matters the most on a radio) so what do they do? They lower the price and add a ton of fancy (and mostly useless in the end) gadgets so the inexperienced customer bites.

 

You're better off buying used commercial mobiles/portables that are undisputedly legal to use in the UHF GMRS band, or whatever band you are going to use them, (b/c some of those cheap Chinese radios is not 100% clear if they are really type accepted or not, etc). 

 

Personally I really like Vertex Standard radios, they come down in price quite a bit, the VX-5500 and VX-6000 are pretty decent radios, with hot receivers... etc. Vertex radios have free programming software, all you need is the cable, which might add to the cost, but other than that the radio RF will be leaps and bounds superior to anything cheap made in China.

 

G.