I am late to this one, but as someone who started with a couple of Baofengs I have to admit that you really get what you pay for.
It is very hard to understand for the first time buyer why these radios are a waste of money, and only after you try to start using those for anything that requires reliability and range the expectations go south, quick. Most of those inexpensive radios have two major problems/deficiencies that most beginners don't understand, and that is even before getting into the legality aspects of those, which have been shuffled already.
So, those cheap overseas radios use direct conversion receivers with very poor (if any) filtering on the front end, because adding those costs a lot of $$$. And those two flaws alone means you should look elsewhere, regardless of anything else, no matter what bells and whistles, etc. Which BTW, that is a very common, and smart, strategy used by the cheap overseas manufacturers, they give you a garbage radio sugar coated real good with all kinds of fancy color screens, 150000 DMR contacts, etc... but in the end the radio lacks where it matters the most, in the RF performance.
So, what does this receiver mumbo-jumbo mean? Very simple:
-Poor receiver selectivity.
-Even worse receiver sensitivity.
Good lord, what is all that? Well, selectivity is usually the reason why the range on your brand new 20 dollar Baofeng is measured in feet, rather than in miles... and why, you might ask, why? Well, b/c when the radio has little selectivity the receiver hears everything around it, as in, it will hear all the stations that are pumping hundreds of watts at 10 Mhz, 20, 30, or even 300 Mhz apart from the frequency you're tuned in. So, what happens when you are standing front row at a concert and your friend tries to talk to you? You try closing your ears to reduce all that noise blasting in an attempt to hear your friend.... well, the same things happens to these cheap radios, the receivers desense so they are not overloaded, as in, receiver sensitivity goes south, and while the receiver might've had an amazing sensitivity figure advertised (which makes the problem even worse) that means diddly squat when the RF environment gets crowded, even operating near other portables, or mobiles, your cheap radio will hear static where it should've heard a signal loud and clear.
When you buy higher end commercial radios from companies like Motorola, Vertex, etc, you will certainly have less bells and whistles, but the radio will have stellar RF performance so range is measured in tens of miles rather than hundredths of an inch.
And that is not going into other details, like spurious emissions, b/c those are terrible too. I can hear those cheap Baofengs on adjacent GMRS channels even 200 feet away... heard about it, tested it, verified it and moved on.
So, before giving your hard earned money to some foreign company that is just collecting on unsuspecting buyers, dazzled by color screens and fancy boot screens, just look at used commercial gear from Motorola, Vertex, Midland, Ritron, etc... and if you plan on using it for GMRS just buy accordingly with the legal requirements.
Here is a video where this desense effect is shown, basically the radio stop receiving altogether...
https://www.youtube....h?v=uUQsZrd3IGo
And this is far more common than you think nowadays, with tons of cellphones, WiFis, computers, Bluetooth devices... there are tons of RF noise nowadays that will render these 20 dollar radios useless where you might need them the most.
Hope this helps.
G.
