Excellent radio! Has both marine band and GMRS to allow you to communicate with all other hand-helds. Also has weather channels. I would highly recommend it.

This Cobra "Marine" radio is really used as an FRS/GMRS radio with a lot of power. It works very well and is easy to program and use. It has a VERY long lasting lithium battery (about 3 days on high power)and transmitts well from a vehicle on trips or through the mountains on a Ranger 4 wheeler UTV.

If the volume is turned up too high in noisy areas the speaker sometimes distorts but that is not a major issue...just turn down the volume a bit. Very dependable and I love the power it can transmit and receive in distance situations.

A great radio and a great buy!

I bought this radio a few days ago and I'm extremely happy with it. Coming from Icom radios I was expecting this to be a low quality item but I was plesantly surprised. The radio is very well made and seems like if it will last many years through rough abuse. I'm planning on using it mainly as a way to communicate with other hunters and since it has both VHF and GMRS frequencies, it's a great buy. One of the guys I hunt with has the same radio and lives about 4 miles away here in South Florida and even though we have plenty of building between our houses, we were able to hear each other clearly using both the VHF and GMRS so it should work great in both land and sea. So if you're thinking of buying it, don't think anymore because Cobra really did a good job putting this radio together.

Pros: Covers Marine VHF, GMRS and overlaps FRS. Comes with everything you could possibly need, especially Li-rechargeable, drop-in charger, AC and DC power cords, and AA battery case. Good controls, metal frame, swivel-off belt clip, easy to read display. Detachable antenna with SMA connector and wrist strap. The documentation is better tha most.

Cons: Squelch (uncoded) and coded squelches take 1 second to unlock. FRS frequencies 1-7 are fixed to GMRS power and frquencies 8-14 are not included.

This is a very complete product especially for the money. You will not have to buy any accessories except perhaps the remote mic. Especially impressive is the inclusion of an AA battery case in addition to the rechargeable battery pack. You get both AC and DC power cords.

There are several subtle things that are "right" about this product. The audio is much stronger than most handhelds. There are actual knobs, not pushbuttons, for squelch and volume controls that are easily manipulated. The controls are logically arranged. The drop-in charger has a plate that adapts it for charging the battery alone, without the radio. The RF squelch will open the tone or DCS squelches allowing accurate, single-control setting of the RF squelch threshold or opening up of the squelch for receiving weak signals. The backlight is orange and bright enough to read easily. The LCD display is easy to read from a normal viewing angle.

I have not had enough experience with the "say again" feature to determine its usefulness but it is well implemented. The audio quality is as good as the original transmission and you get 20 seconds of stored audio. Replay is counted down on the display and you can cancel playback by merely tapping the PTT.

Weather reception has several interesting alerting features including WX alert and SAME monitoring. I did not test these as of this writing, but the WX reception is excellent.

The only negatives I could find about this radio involved the squelch and the lack of FRS power levels and FRS frquencies 8-14.

The squelch open or unlock times were annoyingly long. Uncoded squelch open time on VHF marine or GMRS bands was the better part of a second. This may not seem like much until you consider the fact that most people start speaking just a fraction of a second before they key the mic. With this radio it will lead to the guaranteed loss of up to the first two seconds of audio. For those with a long "uhhhhh" before their real message, that will work. But for most others, it will result in a lot of missed calls. The unlock time for coded squelch (tone or DCS) is almost exactly one second, making performance here slightly worse.

Given the completeness of the product, the fact that a power setting for FRS compatibility and frequencies 8-14 are missing is puzzling. Still, I believe in actual use this limitation is more than easily overcome.

After testing it looks like I'm going to be getting a few more of these. You really can't beat them especially for the price.

I purchased this Cobra MR HH425LI VP VHF Radio to use out on the Delta. After using it I have found that the range is very low, maybe 2 miles on a good day if you have a open view to the receiving party. It is easier to hear others then it is to communicate back even on the High power, when close they get static, if they can even hear you, the coast gaurd towers can not even pick you up on the relays when I tried to contact them about a piling in the water. I would highly suggest that someone really does some shopping if this is your only means of communicating to the coast gaurd or vessels unless you are going to be within a mile of your contact, you can get that out of a walkie talkie. The radio is fine for monitoring stations but I really needed more out of my VHF radio, we are going to hook it up to a external antenna on our boat but this doesn't help to be able to use it in our dingy so I would suggest that people look else where when shopping for a hand held VHF radio, this radio was definately over rated.