BTECH GMRS-V2 5W 200 Fully Customizable Channels GMRS Two-Way Radio. USB-C Charging, IP54 Weatherproof, Repeater Compatible, Dual Band Scanning (VHF/UHF), FM Radio, & NOAA Weather Broadcast Receiver

I'm not sure what others have complained about with these particular radios but I have had mine for nearly 1 year now, and I have had zero issues. Great reception and connection, the range is good and I like the fact that the antenna can be swapped out for longer ranges. I live in Central Florida and via repeaters, I have managed to connect with someone in Kansas. The radio has a lot of features that can be easily accessed but one has to know what they are doing or learn as they go. The battery life is really good with many hours of use, and when charging is needed, the radios use a C-port that is readily available nowadays. I like having the option to set 2 channels and being able to talk with either one using the upper and lower side buttons. Really nice radios to use both indoors and outdoors, and the pocket clip holds well to whatever you attach it to as it has good tension. Overall really good radio's.

Really happy with this radio. Works well and easy to change settings for repeaters tones. I get good audio reports and the receive seems pretty good as well. I have not tested output or harmonics. This style radio feels much less toy like than the UV5R type radios. USB-C charging is nice to have especially in the car. The little nut where the antenna attaches always wants to come lose on mine so I put a bit of light threadlock on it which fixed the issue.

When it comes to a handheld radio such as this, what matters most is the radio's ability to reliably transmit and receive with clarity and strength. On these accounts, I'm extremely pleased with this radio. I upgraded to this handheld from a popular, name brand blister pack of radios after being very disappointed with them and I'm absolutely blown away by how much better this GMRSv2 radio performs. Unlike the blister pack radios I replaced, this radio simply performs when conditions allow, and the voice on the other end is loud and clear. Since buying this, I've become more of a radio enthusiast and am now using local repeaters, building my own j-pole antennas, etc., and this radio has not only enabled the growing hobby, but has been a catalyst for my interest due to its features and capabilities. The transmit range is especially impressive in my opinion, even with the default antenna. I benefit from living at a relative high point in my area so this is a best case scenario, but the radio can reach a repeater as far as 41mi away (line of sight and perched atop a mountain peak) with light "scratch" and background noise when using the shipped antenna, and can hit the same repeater with near crystal clarity when connected to a GMRS tuned j-pole antenna that is elevated only about 8' in the air. While you can purchase this and use it without any real pre-existing experience with handheld radios, a hobbyist will probably be able to obtain more value from this radio than a first time user. The radio is extremely feature-rich and allows for good control over the featuers, their configuration, and overall tuning. To do so, though, be aware that the user manual will likely be necessary as the display character limit means the menu option names and values often need to be cross referenced against the manual. (Note: a printed manual is shipped with this radio, which I applaud - especially since you really need it!) Also note that programming the radio directly is a bit cumbersome, slightly non-intuitive, and you lose a few useful features, therefore I strongly suggest you buy the CHIRP compatible programming cable and program the radio using your computer if you plan to do even a modest amount of programming and want to extract value from every feature. OK, so if you've made it this far and are wondering to yourself, "why the four star rating when all the feedback thus far is largely positive?", well as so many people state in Amazon reviews: I'd really prefer if I could give this radio an overall 4.5 star rating, but since that's not possible, I must select 4 since the radio does have a few minor flaws (which get into below). Aside from the already mentioned limits on the user interface, my only major gripe with the radio is with its power management; most specifically with its battery indicator and capacity display. While I'm extremely pleased with the battery life overall (it'll stay powered on in a monitoring capacity for 2-3 8 hour days), in my opinion, Btech severely missed the mark with the battery indicator -- by the time the indicator shows that the battery has discharged by 1 bar, it has discharged enough that transmission strength starts reducing shortly thereafter and the remaining capacity appears to fall off rapidly leading to the unit powering off - I'll explain further in a bit. This is worked around by occasionally pressing and holding '0' to read the actual voltage (bravo, I love that this can be done), but it's a bit frustrating that the visual indicator's usefulness is pretty significantly reduced. While the safe/useful operating range of a single 3.7v nominal Li-ion cell is vaguely debatable, about ~3.2v-4.2v seems to be an accepted "standard" operational range. Since this radio uses a dual cell battery, I would reasonably expect to see the useful voltage range of the battery sit between ~6.4v-8.4v, though a range of ~6.2v-8.0v wouldn't shock me since for safety reasons, many manufacturers appear to cap the charge ceiling of a dual cell battery to 8.0v and then make up some of the capacity by pushing the floor a bit lower since it's technically within spec. In the case of this handheld, I've observed the following: - On average, the charger seems to bring the battery up to about 8.0v-8.2v - I've noticed that the radio unsurprisingly starts to lose a bit of strength (receive and especially transmit) around 6.5-6.4v - On average, the radio powers off/runs out of charge when the voltage drops below 6.1v - This means that Btech seems to have programmed the min and max thresholds to be ~6.0v (no power) and ~8.2v (max power/charge); as such, the radio is able to maintain power within a somewhat variable spread of 1.9v~2.1v range -- this is validated by the radios excellent actual battery life and is not inherently an issue The issue arises as a function of when the battery indicator (which has 2 "bars"), finally shows the battery has discharged some: it effectively displays both bars (full) down through 7.0v. In other words, the visual indicator does not represent that the battery is depleted by 1 bar until the voltage drops to 6.9v. It then removes another bar at approximately 6.4v, and then finally blinks the icon with no bars to indicate the battery is alarmingly low around 6.2v. This may seem fairly reasonable until you understand that most batteries discharge in a non-linear manner with especially rapid fall off as you approach the lower threshold (this radio's battery being no exception). The result of this is that you can leave the radio on for about 8 hours a day for 2 days (receive only) and the battery indicator will display "full" charge for that whole time, then on the third day, the indicator will show 2 bars to start, then appear to drop rapidly over the next 2-4 hours with the unit somewhat suddenly turning off. This is not an unexpected behavior, but it means that someone may grab the radio from a shelf, check the indicator and see what appears to be a full, or nearly full battery, then set off on a full day's hike just to have it somewhat seemingly rapidly die and turn off before half the day is gone (ask me how I know this...) I feel that Btech is doing themselves a disservice by not accounting for the non-linear discharge properties of the battery. Once you know this quirk of the battery monitoring and visual indicator and leverage the voltage readout instead, it's not a big problem to work around, but I implore Btech to consider modifying their approach to this indicator algorithm. Overall, I highly recommend this radio if you're looking for one that provides quite a bit value for the cost and don't need a radio that has a high IP rating for water and dust resistance.

I'm a 70 year old amateur radio operator who has been a public safety 2-way radio bench repair and installation technician most of my life, and though I've only had this radio for two days, I've already grown very fond of it. It's extremely well made, durable, easy to program and easy to use. For what I paid for it, I am well pleased. The over-all quality of this radio makes me wish I could have ONE of every single radio they make. Few things man made are truly perfect, but I really think this is a great radio in just about every area. I will get a better antenna for when I need to communicate when talking simplex or it's a real stretch to a repeater, and I will probably need to re-read the manual a few times, and as technology and radios evolve, I will eventually move on to what are going to be "newer and better toys," but for now, this radio is a keeper. Operators on the other end of simplex or the other side of the repeater tell me it sounds really good, and when I connect it to a good speaker mic or Bluetooth headset, it will be even better. Conclusion: For the price, a very decent handheld that I can use for GMRS and amateur comms...I give it a solid 3 and one half to a solid 4 out of 5 stars. If you need one that can do both modes and this is the most you can afford, you too could be very happy with this little radio for a very long time. Buy it!

I was looking for a GMRS radio that could be used as base emergency communications for a small group of family and neighbors. This radio was exactly what I was looking for.

Battery life is fine, even though the extended batteries sold by Btech don’t lock in to the back of this radio. Charges pretty quickly. Performance is ok, but not great. Tx and Rx are both kind of weak, but acceptable. At $45, I suppose it’s not a BAD value, but for a little more money, you can get a much better radio. At $64, it’s not worth it. The dual PTT is a nice feature, but it does not do dual receive while the dual ptt is active, which makes the dual ptt kind of pointless. All in all, this radio could be great, the size is just about perfect, but this is honestly a mediocre radio. Get an HA1G or a uv5r GMRS.

I like that all the GMRS channels are pre-programmed. I only use it on simplex and it works well. Will have to try the local repeater and see if that works. I do most of my communicating with ham radio but I have this to connect with my neighbors who have not yet made the leap to HR :-))

Looks awesome