Retevis RT95 Dual Band Mobile Radio Long Range Ham Radio with Antenna 180 Degree Rotatable LCD Display Mic

Wonderful little radio, much smaller than I expected but works good, sounds good and for a good price. I highly recommend the RT95 as a mobile or base unit as the 25watts of power is very decent for the units size and price. For mobile use it's perfect because it weighs about as much as two HT's, and combined with a yagi can be used in a chest rig with a battery for some very good outdoor fun. I will update as I use it more but so far, the bright display, and ease of use will have me playing with it for a long time. Read more

I bought two of these. One for house paired with Diamond X30 in attic. Output watts above each advertised rating. Easy to program with CHIRP. Sound output fairly good. I use a 5"speaker in the house. Need one in the truck but have fed it through the AUX input with a 3.5mm audio male/male plug. Used the mag mount for a while but eventually put a Comet NMO mount. Can hit repeaters 30 miles in truck. Read more

Great and effective radio. I paired this with a diamond x200a antenna and 25ft of kmr400 coax and this has plenty of power and usage. With this setup I easily open repeaters at 75 miles. Easy to program and use. Audio quality is great and handheld is clear and intuitive. I would recommend this setup to anyone making a home base station or mobile setup. Read more

I bought this a '24 black friday sale at a reduced price. It's advertised as 'rugged', and I want to eventually put it in my UTV. After playing with it for a few weeks I can say I like it rather much! Initially I found it confusing and difficult to navigate. The manual is not very descriptive nor overly helpful. A few trips to Youtube and about an hour and a half playing around with it, and I felt much more comfortable with it. That being said, it will be a 'set and forget' radio for my wife, as she would not be able to navigate it's many features and do things like change the pl tone or power for example. Not that they are hard to do, rather she just chooses not to invest any energy into learning how to do it unless it is very simple. One of the first things I did was change the band plan so I could use GMRS and all of the 70 cm band. It's easy to do, just press and hold a couple of buttons and power it up (there are many vids on Youtube to help you with this). After that I got CHIRP connected with the usb cable (that it comes with!), I set about getting it programmed. CHIRP now allows you to program many of the settings such as programable keys too, so that's a plus. (As an aside, I did use Retevis' own programming software, which works similarly to CHIRP except it WILL NOT let you copy and paste frequency data between different channels such as you can with CHIRP. Huge drawback.) The unit has six programmable keys on the face, which with a single push of the 'func' key allows you to program a second feature into each one. (In other words, each key can be programmed to do two seperate things.) Combined with the microphone, that's 16 user programmable buttons. A lot of settings can also be accessed by press-and-hold too of the key, which I found a great feature. This helps keep you out of the lengthy menu system. The menu system is huge, it has everything in it, and you can program each programmable key through it as well as through the software. The dual-watch feature is a poor attempt to replicate a dual-receiver radio, but it does allow you to virtually monitor two channels at once. In simpler terms, you can set it on a channel or frequency on the A side, then set it to any other channel or frequency on the B side, and then the radio will rapidly check both until something is heard. Once traffic is received, it ignores the other until the traffic is done. So if you are receiving traffic on the A side, and B calls, you won't hear B until A finishes. It can't scan a side and listen to the other at the same time either. You can turn this 'dual watch' feature off which I have done with mine. Initially I had a pretty significant point of annoyance in that the selector knob could only change the channel. I'd never had a radio where you couldn't just reach and turn the knob to change the volume. Instead, you had to push the programmable key used for volume, and then turn the knob. But then, I find a setting that allows you to change that knob to volume first and use a key to change channel. Wow! Incredible customization. Now here are the things I like; - A great screen! For such a small thing, it is brilliant and generally easy to read unless in the bright sunlight, however putting your hand over it makes it easy enough to read. - Lighted keys! This is a feature my $1400 Yaesu "portable" HF radio doesn't even have! - It's nice and loud! No need for an external speaker. -The programmable keys! once I got them configured, I loved them! My microphones programmable buttons can; monitor with the squelch open, change power settings, scan on/off, and reverse listen - all with a single button push! So easy! The programmable buttons on the radio are fully configurable too. I like this! It is surprisingly heavy, as the case is really just a giant heat sink. Which it needs because it doesn't have a fan, which is fine by me as I'm going to mount it in a dusty vehicle and I don't want a fan pulling in gobs of sand into it's guts. I've had the radio get pretty hot with high talk time at full power, but it cools off readily enough. Just the same, I wouldn't mount this in your glove box or center console where it gets no air over it. I wished it had a detachable face, which it doesn't... but then I find a guy on Ebay selling kits that allow you to make it detachable. This is perfect when you want a dash mount but there is no room behind for a full radio. My only other gripes, which are minor, is that I've been told several times I have low audio. I generally speak pretty loudly and with the mic close to my mouth, but even so this radio suffers a bit from it. Not unreadable, just a touch quieter than it should be. And there is no setting I can find that can change that. And it scans very slowly compared to most other radios. But, as I plan to mount this in our offroad vehicle, it shouldn't matter that much since it will likely be left on one channel. Overall a great radio for the price! Read more

This radio does nearly everything i need a dual-band radio to do, for a low price. It easily reaches a repeater 10 miles away, and i live in a valley. I have it powered by a 5amp power supply, which is less than the recommended current but so far works well and without issue. My only complaint is the scan function is terribly slow...only about 2 frequencies per second. That makes it kinda useless as a scanner. If you program with Chirp, there is no "OFF" choice for the microphone keypad lights. If you turn them off from within the radio's settings, and then use Chirp, the setting will be changed to "5". Edit: The volume setting is a little annoying. It seems to have no consistent transition from low to high volume. It will remain unchanged for a few notches between 2 and ~4, and then suddenly get much louder. When running the audio through headphones, 1 is too quiet and 2 is borderline too loud. I'm considering running it through an external audio controller to avoid that annoyance. Read more