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. | Satisfaction | Score |
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| Overall satisfaction | 8 |
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