[UV-5R FCC Compliant Version] BAOFENG GT-5R Dual Band Two Way Radio, UHF VHF Ham Radio Handheld for Adults, Clean Spurious Emission, with 1800mAh Battery, Earpiece, 128CH, VOX, FM, Chirp Compatible

For the price this little radio rocks. Got it on sale for about $18 and get great signal reports. Tired old hams have a certain disdain for Chinese made radios, yet sit all day long on their Chinese made computers while staring at their Chinese made phones. Baofeng hits it out of the park with this little FCC compliant HT. The signal is clean with no spurious emissions, which was a problem with earlier UV-5R models. It's durable and just flat out works. The GT-5R sounds like a radio many times more expensive. If you want a basic radio, don't waste your money on an expensive brand.

I like the small "UV5R" size of this thing. With a short antenna, it's truly pocket size. Out of the box, this radio is locked & only transmits on 2M & 70CM. If you do the 3 button trick & return it to the "factory" screen, then it becomes the same as an open UV5R. If you download into chirp as a GT5R, the chirp software will not let you program transmit on frequencies outside 2M & 70CM. If you unlock the radio & download it as a UV5R, you will then have a world of options, but not air band. This is a great first radio for a new ham. Using it as it comes out of the box will help to prevent you from making mistakes that you don't want to make. When you are ready to experiment more, in areas where it is legal, that option is also available. ...and if you make a mess of things & brick the radio, you are only out like $15, or even less if you consider that you still keep the battery & antenna to use on other radios. The antenna on this is the standard "rubber duck" that is not great, but it's good enough to start with, and later you can swap for a different SMA female antenna when you decide if you want a long one, a short one, a high gain one, a signal stick, an external J-pole on the side of your house, etc. ...and this is said to be the "clean" Baofeng, that doesn't have spurious emissions. I haven't checked that myself yet, but some guys on u-tube seemed to get good results when they looked into it. I think that this is a great first ham radio/knock around radio/take it in the woods radio/leave it in the car radio, etc. It's no Kenwood, but it's less than $20 & it works pretty well. A 6-pack of these things will last you through many adventures. Maybe some day you will turn 2 of them into a repeater. ...and still have 4 more left over. $100 gets you a lot of options here.

Returned the original radio because it did not have the indicated earpiece. Amazon sent the second radio and it did not have the earpiece either! Now, to be honest The missing earpiece is an inconvenience, it will get worked out. Now, the radio itself, easy to program with Chirp, the audio is really, really good. The radio would be a great first radio for a new ham. Since I do not use a handheld that much it is good for me just to carry around the house to listen to. I will use it to listen to the weather net when it is up. I have tried one of the repeaters I get on occasionally and it is not really close. It gets in there very easily and that was a surprise, didn't think it would. Easy to use, battery life seems to be good. And if it is someone on a limited budget the price is very good. Looking for a handheld? Get it a try, it won't be for everyone but it is worth a try.

It's decent, it's legal, and I can listen in on old people talk about their back problems.

Great for new ham users. Cheap enough price for help deciding if ham experience is for you.

I ordered the GT5R (and programming cable) in order to have an easy-to-program dual band radio to carry with me on field activations. My existing HT was simply too hard to manage the memories and was only 1 watts output power. I opted for this GT5R version instead of the UV5R in order to have the cleaner transmit signal. It has been a lot of fun over the first few weeks of ownership, as I’ve used it for amateur VHF/UHF bands, law enforcement channel monitoring, weather stations, and even the VHF/UHF repeater on the International Space Station (ISS). There are a few missing features on these cheaper radios, such as the ability to change which memories you ”scan” or “skip” while scanning frequencies “without” reprogramming all the memories again using the CHIRP programming software. But overall, this is an easy radio to program once you understand the more important settings within their menu system.The one issue I had when opening the box was that the earpiece/mic was missing. I went to the Radiooddity website, let them know about the missing item, and they promptly sent a replacement item. OUTSTANDING SERVICE from Radiooddity. I had heard from other amateurs about their good service, and they earned my support. Thanks, Radiooddity!

The most important thing that keeps your radio working is the charger. I bought the radio, plugged it in to charge the battery, a half hour later I notice the charging light was off. I went to see if the radio was fully charged and smell burnt plastic. The charger burned out and my radio was not fully chargedThe radio works fine but I'm out a charger. I am disappointed with the product accessorie.

This is a great small easy to use radio. Received a lot of good signal reports. Does not have a lot of power but most HT’s don’t. Able to hit local repeaters easily.