BAOFENG 5RX Ham Radio Handheld Multi-Band Two Way Radios Amateur Long Range Walkie Talkies for Adults, One Key Frequency Match, Airband, DTMF, Earpiece (Black)

I think I paid 18 bucks in this thing has the three major bands that VHF and UHF ham radio operators want to use. 2 meters, 220 megahertz and 440 MHz. I find them very easy to operate. It works with the chirp software but I just program them easily. I test one repeater and once I get it working I just add it to the memory. Maybe it doesn't work I don't add it. Look very compact the battery is pretty nice. Also the dual features like FM radio and you have a little flashlight on there come in handy once in awhile. I also have the extended batteries. When you compare $18 or even $30 for some of the bail things to the several hundred dollar HTS offered by the big companies this is really a bargain.

Well, I'm not sure what a 5RX is because I can't find any support for a downloadable manual (so I used the one from "The Chinese Radio Documentation Project"). The description says it is an upgraded UV-5R with multi-band capability. It's an inexpensive Ham radio to get started, but very capable. I didn't buy it for the Airband capability, and it claims that it can be picked up - not sure about that. I was adjacent to the tower and runway within a few hundred yards. S/N quality is useable, but a clearer comm comes through LiveATC.net. That being said, I am able to program this radio with CHIRP-next and a YouRUSH FTDI cable from macOS Sonoma - no issues - works great. Can't beat this for the price!

Cannot review transmit. Bought alongside 2 UV-5R from the same seller; I know seller matters for UV-5R. Comparison may be meaningful. I have no related equipment, not even a programming cable, as this is my first step into radio.You have to manually enter airband by punching in a frequency from 108 to 135.999(rounds to 135.99875). Same for 1.25m, by punching somewhere from 200.000 to 259.999(299.99875). BAND only flips between either UHF or a shared pool of the 3 other bands, and they are discrete bands for the purposes of stepping and scanning. UHF is just ultra-special, I guess.Well, only the "standard" dual-band antenna was included; it appears identical to the UV-5R antennae save for some bonus flash which you'd think the lesser units would sport. This antenna is obviously not rated for 1.25m or airband. However, I was able to receive legible talks in 1.25m despite this, albeit with an uncomfortable amount of hiss, and weird noises come through airband when scanning in 50KHz steps. I doubt I'll get to stretch airband's legs.I believe my 5RX arrived with some tarnishing on the SMA male. On the first look-over, I had noted debris/discoloration on the brass ring around the plug but thought little; there was none such on either UV-5R. In use, I first noted signal problems when trying to receive NOAA, where the signal meter would only flip between max or zero--causing overzealous squelch--and that made me believe the mentioned "transmit icon" problem on the listing was related. Well, after mad desperate screwing, I unintentionally bore witness to an improvement in the signal. It could be the connector self-polished or maybe I appeased the machine spirit--either way, the signal meter began to be less boolean, though 5RX is just as orientation-sensitive as both UV-5R likely thanks to the antennae.Aside, 5RX literally shares every appearance with UV-5R but with different stickers; see the review with a photo of the back. The 5RX battery says SR2345 where the UV-5R battery says SR2335 but they're both labeled as and wholly appear to be BL-5(???). Firmware on all self-reports BFB298 and 210223M. All have slight variations in button clickiness, knob smoothness, speaker tone, and to a degree their interference in certain orientations. I want to say speech comes through best with the least noise on 5RX but it's a developing anecdotal opinion--it's weird, it seems like there's noise attenuation(???) because there's sometimes a negligible hiss that fades in with words on 5RX WN WIDE, but the speaker also has more separation and range, going by FM broadcast music--maybe related, hiss is sharper, like the fuzz got chopped, but definitely less masking to my ear. On WN NARROW, 5RX is unexpectedly much louder and loudest by an ear-hurting amount at arm's length. Both UV-5R distort harder in slightly different ways, incidentally mostly encountered on UHF ham talks involving noise passed through repeaters. Maybe it's just mine.I confirm that review that mentions unpleasant squelch pulsing--pulse duration is as low as ~1/12th of a second and sometimes lengthens somehow(???); however, exact SQL on mine has little to no effect on this--just the same, it pulses at maximum ~6Hz(~0.5 duty cycle: origin of the 1/12th ballpark). WN and TDR affect the rate, but WN NARROW TDR OFF does just 1 pulse for each signal. It's square pulsing if you care. This all usually occurs when scanning hangs on static--I have noted nothing in the hiss except for once when it scanned temporary beeping and hilariously either synced to the beeps or chopped up a long beep or I'm crazy. Sometimes it persists for as long as the scan hangs and other times it stops after a number, but sticking to the frequency it's obviously endemic. Very odd but scanning still works great, or at least on par, or even too well as the offending frequencies are not easily caught by the UV-5R, suggesting an innate difference. I need a ballistic calculation for this here salt missile.My 5RX suffers from involuntary monitoring during(yes, during, static plays concurrently with and drowns out) FM broadcast but it's fixed when squelch cycles, whether by MONI or luck, and seems to stay fixed per boot. Between this and that, squelch is just weird for some reason, and sadly SQL OFF, in cruel accordance, hurts my ears and makes CALL useless except for that 1 mostly-useless thing, but that's still more than PTT with my current clearance deficiency.I've rewritten this at least 3 times over 3 days subject to music including country. Hope this helps. More on this later? (I pushed a few small edits and now have a cable but haven't done anything with it yet.)

Update:Customer service followed up on my review and supplied the correct compatibility model for programming this radio with CHIRP. The correct profile is under Radioddity UV-5RX3. The radio will now acccept programming in all 3 bands as advertised.NOT an actual Baofeng, and therefore NOT supported in CHIRP for 3 band programming! I REALLY hate the fact that Amazon allows these non-original products to be listed as the same name. No programming software support is beyond frustrating. I’d rather have my gums scraped than program this radio with the keypad.

This is about my 6th radio from Baofeng since 2013. I have a few different models, program them with CHIRP using linux and mac. I wore out one after6 years of use, and have bought a bunch for other folks in my off grid community out here in the west TX desert. Very Reliable and low cost. Haven't bought a kenwood in many years, these are WAY cheaper and better because of broadband availability. Been a ham since high school in late 70s.

The manual is useless

Good little radio for 20 bucks. I use it with my allstar node. Not the cleanest when transmitting, as one might expect. Interferes with my mmdvm a little, and takes out my fusion radio all together. All these mentioned are on 440 btw. Haven't used 220 on it yet, we have one repeater in town, and it's not very active. 73! W8***

The performance on VHF bands is abysmal. I have several antennas from Nagoya and ABBREE that work perfectly on my Baofang UV-5R, by Quansheng, and my Tidradio. None of them work on this 5RX. The only two antennas that do work are the stock antenna and a $2.00 no-name stubby antenna. BTW, I'm not talking about transmit, here...I'm talking about receive. My basic first test is "Can it pick up the NOAA WX station?" This is the only radio of the five I own that cannot pick up NOAA WX with a real (from Amazon) Nagoya or ABBREE antenna. This is the SECOND 5RX radio I have with the same problem, so I'm guessing it's a design or manufacturing issue. I love Baofeng radios. This one is a complete disappointment.