[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

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.

Wanted for him to have something ease to use and works well. Thanks

I got this radio after my UV-5R started having front end overloading problems after about 6-7 years. I'm happy we have a us compliant version of the radio now. If this one lasts as long as the other one did, I'll be extremely happy. This radio is a work horse, you can't beat it for price and usability. It'd be nice if the voice prompts covered more functions of the radio, but since it's programmable with both the RT systems software, and chirp, I had no problem transferring my entries from the UV-5R to this radio. Haven't had a chance to test it fully just yet, but I expect it'll work just fine. Really can't go wrong with this little FCC compliant version of the UV-5R.

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.

Had an issue but they fixed it as soon as I mentioned it. They are shipping out a brand new radio. They asked for review it doesn't work I purchased this to you's while I'm working since I working a lot of remote areas that do not have cell service but do have fire towers that constantly monitor emergency channels. Unfortunately this thing cannot transmits on any channels at all. And unless I'm within a hundred feet of a radio that is transmitting I cannot hear anything. I'm pretty sure the transmitter was fried right out of the box. Also most features cannot be used without the programming cable

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

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.