Baofeng UV-5R Two Way Radio Dual Band 144-148 420-450Mhz Walkie Talkie 1800mAh Li-ion Battery Black

This little radio is extremely powerful and has a great battery life (multiple days of standby power if you enable power saving mode and don't transmit) and it has a removable antenna so you can attach something like a Nagoya, Yagi, or custom coaxial antenna to it. If you buy the extended battery or even just another standard battery, you'll have more battery life than you know what to do with, unless you are constantly transmitting with VOX or you're constantly listening to FM radio with the volume turned up! The stock antenna is pretty good compared to the other more expensive Baofengs, but upgrading to a nagoya NA-771 removes a ton of the faint background hiss on both rx and tx, as well as increasing the tx range quite a bit. From my bench, I couldn't really pick up any additional FM radio stations when scanning through the entire FM range using the Nagoya vs the stock antenna, but what I did notice was that every single station came through crystal clear after swapping the antenna, whereas before it would pick them all up but some stations definitely had poor reception unless I would walk all around the garage looking for a good signal path. It has quite a few nice features but nothing digital, and doesn't have true dual watch monitoring, but with TDR turned on for me I'm able to monitor two frequencies and pick which one I care about more so if they're both active it will let me listen to the "preferred" frequency. It has dcs and ctcss codes for accessing those repeaters, and supports DTMF codes for dialing into Internet relay repeaters or echolink repeaters. As far as ease of use, you will need the manual to decipher the different options in the settings menu. There are some websites out there that give a more detailed breakdown of the menu options and their descriptions, as well as youtube videos to demonstrate more complicated things like programming or connecting two Baofengs to make a mobile repeater. Both of those capabilities require a different cable, not included. Finally, regarding programming, you DO NOT need to get the programming cable as you can do everything right from the radio. If you want to look up different frequencies of your local repeaters and store them in the memory channels, you can do that pretty quickly and easily right from the radio once you learn the flow. Where the programming cable comes in handy is when you want to add a hinge number of pre-programmed channels to the radio, but IMO there is no need for that. I tried it with all the virginia repeaters and found that only 1 or 2 ever had any traffic, even when I would go driving for hours and leave it on channel scan mode. Where I think the programming cable would come in handy is if you routinely traveled out of state (like from the east coast to the west coast) and you had a different set of frequencies and repeaters and settings for each location that you wanted to be able to swap between easily. When you go to the west coast you can just backup your east coast profile to save any changes you made or any new frequencies you saved, and then restore the west coast profile so you're able to make changes and save any new frequencies you find there. Then when you're ready to come back, just save the west coast profile to the computer and restore the east coast profile. Read more

I got this because a buddy told me I could unlock it to transmit further for GMRS frequency channels and sure enough it worked. Those radios are a little more expensive but this worked perfectly and saved me some money. Plenty of YouTube videos on it. I only use it for off roading and the battery lasted several days, range worked for what we needed it for, solid and durable, easy to understand each other. Read more

My rating reflects the value for the price and not necessarily a flawless product. At time of purchase in Q4 2025, the cost was ~$16.50. The Baofeng UV-5R is a good entry point into amateur radio. You can fairly easily exchange antennas, and listen to regular broadcast FM with or without headphones/earpiece. It’s both over and under featured and takes some time to get used to. I think I’ll likely purchase an advanced model later that can receive Noaa, aviation bands, etc, but I’m happy with this purchase. UV-5R is compatible with CHIRP, and I have used it successfully with a USB UART to Kinwood style cable to program channels. My only complaint is that this can’t legally be used to broadcast on non Amateur Radio frequencies in the USA, but that’s more of an FCC limitation than a technical one. I have since purchased part 90 radios to use in conjunction with a site license at work and my experience with the Baofeng made setting those up correctly much easier. I like that you can listen to broadcast FM while tuned to other channels and it’ll break away from the broadcast FM to let you hear the transmission, then go back to broadcast FM after a few seconds. You can use this in “channel” or “frequency” mode. I have mostly used it in channel mode as my initial use was just listening to channels at work. Frequency mode is what it says, you can punch in a frequency and it’ll tune to it. Sometimes the best way to learn is hands-on, and for that this won’t disappoint. Read more

A nice intro to HAM radio device. Near unbeatable price, and a classic. While the battery power could use an upgrade, this is also easily replaceable with many options on the market. As it's an entry level radio, the range is expectantly short and if you plan to use this for more than intro/exploratory purposes I would recommend either a different radio or at least an antenna replacement. You do NEED a license in order to operate this radio but you do NOT need one to just listen in. Otherwise, buttons, input, and menu screens are relatively self explanatory and easy to use. Read more