BAOFENG UV-25M Tri-Power 11W Ham Radio Long Range Handheld Radio

Sounds better than the smaller brothers. Larger buttons make easy programming without Chirp. Tuner pulls in signals better. Extra large battery saves the risk of the buying fake upgrades for smaller radios. I’ve been bit by that 2 times on other radios. It also appears to be a bit bore water resistant as well. Just make sure it will transmit on all frequency’s you plan on using. Some will and some will not. The manual is not correct 100% but if you don’t give up too soon you will figure out the file tree just fine. Would buy from this seller again. One from another seller was a locked version and it stopped working right away. I did not a glitch with this one once. I removed the battery for a few minutes and it reset an works fine now.

The receiver has a problem (typical to baofeng) where the squelch acts weird. Even strong signals just randomly drop out of the squelch on the lowest setting. I can hit the monitor button and the signal is still there and strong but the radio seems to randomly switch receive circuitry. There is some weird switching going on as the receiver tried to figure out routing of the signal. It allows it through the squelch and then if I move the radio, the radio switches (you can hear a transition happen) and the signal cuts out, not because it's a weak signal, just gets cut out. It just gets blocked by the receiver circuit switching to a secondary rx circuit or something. Not dependable communication. I've noticed other beofengs do this but this one is the worst. And it's not due to overload. I'm not in that kind of area or near strong transmitters. Lowering the squelch value in Chirp doesn't fix this issue.

The form factor was intimidating at first, however the performance rivals my mobile units in my car and truck. I am very pleased with this radio.

I love this radio, my EDC.

This is a huge radio. It has a large display, large keypad and a huge 5200 mah battery. It has all of the standard features of this generation of handhelds like wide band recieve, one touch frequency copy, etc. It comes shipped with a couple of antennas and all of the other stuff usually expected. I'm not going to do a blow by blow on the features of this radio. They all work more or less as described in the manufacturers literature. The performance of the radio was average. Output power on two meters into a 50 ohm non reactive load measured 8.6 watts on two meters and 7.8 watts on 70 cm. Into the gooseneck antenna it measured 7.9 watts at a 1.01 swr on two meters and 12.0 watts at a 2.2 swr. It measured 8.0 watts at a 2.3 swr on two meters and 6.2 watts at a 1.61 swr on 70 cm into the tape antenna. Receiver sensitivity was in excess of -120 db on both bands. Harmonic suppression was another matter altogether. We found no measurable harmonics on the 70 cm band. But, the first harmonic on two meters measured only -13 db below the primary carrier. The FCC requires a minimum of -30 db. It seems to me that this radio offers nothing to the American amateur radio market that is not already available in smaller, more easily handled format. Performance is almost identical to several of the regular sized BF and other brand radios in this class. When I first saw this radio I thought "Darn, did BF get a contract with one of the old Soviet states for a batch of cheap squad radios." The design and size is highly remenicent of Soviet era equipment. Having said that, the radio would be a pretty good military radio for a budget strapped third world country. The keypad is big enough to allow operation with thin gloves on. The battery life should be great since the internals of the unit are probably the same as those in smaller radios with half the battery capacity. Combine that with frequency hopping (legal in the US) and simple voice encryption (illegal in the US) and you have a fairly useful tactical radio. The downside for a trooper would be that the thing is huge and would take up a lot of pack space and it is heavy. Nearly a pound and a half. Bottom line, this radio will probably not go into regular use in my little domain. Other, smaller radios do the same thing just as well or better.

good range

Doesn't transmit only receives I needed this for work but Doesn't help if I can only hear and not communicate back

This radio is huge. It's big and heavy. Got this radio to test out man it's about the size of a Motorola XTS5000. I also took several photos of the radio next to the old model, UV-5R and the TID Radio H3 which is a fairly small radio to show the size comparison. Also measured the output power of this radio and it close to what the manufacturer claims. Two things that really caught my attention and features I really like is the volumn knob. It is protected and has a guard on top. So the accidental bump and turning the volume up or down will be limited now. The other thing is the power output on the 1.25m band. It's at 5 watts which is really good. The 220Mhz band has very little traffic and interference. Thus this is one of my favorite band for long distance communication besides 2m. Though I tried to find the battery spec on this radio but couldn't find it anywhere. The other thing is that the battery is not a quick detach. It is held in by 2 screws and comes with a small screwdriver. Charging the radio is via by the USB Type-C port on the back. The radio comes with a earpiece, it works but nothing to brag about. It also comes with a "military style" antenna which is big and cumbersome. It works on 3 bands. On 2m and 1.25 band it ok. It works better on the 70cm band. So I suggest anyone getting a decent tri band or a dual bander antenna. Any issues with the radio? Nope.. not yet. Haven't tested the radio for the spurious emission but I'll do that at a later update. Also this radio is currently supported by CHIRP. Just gotta use the UV-17 Pro under the drop down menu.