Baofeng UV-B5

[mellowcream]

When I was searching for a second Baofeng, I came across the UV-B5. What caught my eye first was the manual tuning knob at the top of the radio, a great replacement to the flashlight that I think is a good feature but never end up using.

 

            When I opened up the box and picked up the radio, It felt miles better than the oversize Tylenol shape of the UV-5R. The only issue with build quality is that the belt clip screws are too short. That was easily fixed by swapping the screws with the UV-5R.

 

 

 

            On the left side of the radio, there are three keys. The PTT button, and the monitor/backlight button. The third is for activating the flashlight on the UV-B6.  On the right there are the 3.5mm microphone jack and 2.5mm speaker jack. On the top is the dial for tuning the radio. It makes changing menu options miles faster and easier than every other Baofeng.

 

            The battery is 2000MAH and lasts just about as long as my UV-5R. The stock antenna does a very good job, surprisingly. A Nagoya NA-771 made little difference talking on distant repeaters. The manual is also quite good and easy(ish) to understand.

 

            This radio's transmitter is advertised at 5 watts, but according to my power meter it is as follows.

 

VHF 146.520: 4.3 watts

UHF 462.600: 3.8 watts

 

            This is almost the same as my UV-5R. Nothing special here.

 

           

Now the Receiver is where this radio kills every other Baofeng. The receiver does get overloaded, but it's quite hard to overload it. The squelch also actually works on VHF, unlike the UV-5R.

 

The UV-B5, in my opinion is the best Beofeng. I bought mine for only $25 brand new. The value is great and the radio is almost perfect aside from a few flaws.  

[PastorGary]

Staff Note: The Part 90 type certification for this series seems to be in doubt. Some early radios in this series had no FCC sticker. Some mid production run radios did, and some late production run radios again did not.  As with all equipment reviewed in this section of the forum, buyer/user beware.

[tomharkness]

Staff Note: The Part 90 type certification for this series seems to be in doubt. Some early radios in this series had no FCC sticker. Some mid production run radios did, and some late production run radios again did not.  As with all equipment reviewed in this section of the forum, buyer/user beware.

Does Part 90 even apply to this?

 

95.129 Station equipment.

Every station in a GMRS system must use transmitters the FCC has certificate for use in the GMRS. Write to any FCC Field Office to find out if particular transmitter has been certificated for the GMRS. All station equipment in a GMRS system must comply with the technical rules in part 95.

[PastorGary]

The radio in question once carried Part 90 certification and, as published in one of the Commissions websites nearly a year ago, that Part 90 cert. was revoked.  The reason escapes me at the moment - anyone remember the details back then?

[jwilkers]

I thought they were good too until the uhf intermod essentially made 70 cm useless. In a downtown area...wow.

 

Sent from my LG-D631 using Tapatalk

[Tacbear]

When I was searching for a second Baofeng, I came across the UV-B5. What caught my eye first was the manual tuning knob at the top of the radio, a great replacement to the flashlight that I think is a good feature but never end up using.

 

            When I opened up the box and picked up the radio, It felt miles better than the oversize Tylenol shape of the UV-5R. The only issue with build quality is that the belt clip screws are too short. That was easily fixed by swapping the screws with the UV-5R.

 

 

 

            On the left side of the radio, there are three keys. The PTT button, and the monitor/backlight button. The third is for activating the flashlight on the UV-B6.  On the right there are the 3.5mm microphone jack and 2.5mm speaker jack. On the top is the dial for tuning the radio. It makes changing menu options miles faster and easier than every other Baofeng.

 

            The battery is 2000MAH and lasts just about as long as my UV-5R. The stock antenna does a very good job, surprisingly. A Nagoya NA-771 made little difference talking on distant repeaters. The manual is also quite good and easy(ish) to understand.

 

            This radio's transmitter is advertised at 5 watts, but according to my power meter it is as follows.

 

VHF 146.520: 4.3 watts

UHF 462.600: 3.8 watts

 

            This is almost the same as my UV-5R. Nothing special here.

 

           

Now the Receiver is where this radio kills every other Baofeng. The receiver does get overloaded, but it's quite hard to overload it. The squelch also actually works on VHF, unlike the UV-5R.

 

The UV-B5, in my opinion is the best Beofeng. I bought mine for only $25 brand new. The value is great and the radio is almost perfect aside from a few flaws.  

 

 

I have found everthing you said to be true with my UV5b's

 

As far as the squech problem on the UV-5R I found a way to program the squelch for my BF-F8's

 

If you use Chirp, in "settings" go to "service settings" and you will see UHF/VHF squelch settings 0 thru 9. leave 0 on 0. start at VHFsquelch 1 and change the value to 24..change VHF squelch 2 value to 29......go up 5 on each until you get to VHF squelch 9, which will be changed to 64. Use the same values for UHF.

If the programming for the UV-5R doesn't have "Service Settings" then I guess you can't change your squelch.