# Beofeng for the price!



## capt. (Dec 15, 2017)

I have looked at these for years and always thought , gotta be junk . well my yeasu and Icom all need new batteries the cost of the replacement was 40 bucks ea and up. So I bought 5 UV5R Beofeng handhelds for 120 bucks , did not have high hopes but dang they work. So with the L-ion battery I'll charge em up and put away an extra set for the SHTF scene. I really don't know how they do it . Hate to buy Chinese but my Icoms were 300 buck ea and I can't recall how much the yeasu's were. But 5 complete radios 2 or 3 band for 120 bucks. up on the shelf in case of a big todo in the future. Anyone have any thoughts , if you have used them.


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## 101airborne (Jan 29, 2010)

Personal opinion. I have several of the Beofeng UV5R's I actually think on a 1/0 scale they are a solid 6 to weak 7 as compared to my yeasu which I'd give a strong 8. The Beofeng is a little tempremental to program and wouldn't be in my first 3 picks for a newbie. I actually asked my nephew who is an IT programmer to help me get mine set up. I've been playing with them a little bit but waiting to gat my license before doing much.


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## capt. (Dec 15, 2017)

I think! , that even with the license you can go out of bounds on channel/MHZ with these radios and that is why .gov does not care for them and had the company make changes. So be cautious and down load the ham/gmrs/frs/ list of usable (legal) use of certain channels. It also has aircraft and fed stuff on the older system. Fed LE and Most state LE use up in the over 800 tracking - MHZ. But stil use some lower MHZ that you could over hear.I got them because of the lion batt and for future use if SHTF. I still use my older ham radio, but with the cell phone not so much. We need a higher grade lic holder to chime in !!.


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## frankd4 (Oct 22, 2010)

We use them as squad radios and have two repeaters we can deploy, as far as programing them I use CHIRP you can get all the FRS and GMRS freq's from the program.


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## frankd4 (Oct 22, 2010)

capt. said:


> I have looked at these for years and always thought , gotta be junk . well my yeasu and Icom all need new batteries the cost of the replacement was 40 bucks ea and up. So I bought 5 UV5R Beofeng handhelds for 120 bucks , did not have high hopes but dang they work. So with the L-ion battery I'll charge em up and put away an extra set for the SHTF scene. I really don't know how they do it . Hate to buy Chinese but my Icoms were 300 buck ea and I can't recall how much the yeasu's were. But 5 complete radios 2 or 3 band for 120 bucks. up on the shelf in case of a big todo in the future. Anyone have any thoughts , if you have used them.


I have had four Beofengs going on three years now we use them every day around the farmstead no issues if one of them bites the dust no big deal still have a couple in the box on stand by they are not the same as our Icoms but are good throw away units.


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