Customer Reviews

COBRA MicroTalk PR-950DX 5-Mile 22-Channel FRS/GMRS Two Way Radio

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

See other relevant reviews under the item "Cobra GMRS Two-Way Radio Pair (PR 950-2 DX)." (Unlike the pair, this product has NiMH batteries and a charger.) I agree with those reviews, which basically say that these radios have great sound quality and range. Just a few more points for people who are trying to decide whether to buy one:

SIZE: About the same size as the competitors. Without the antenna and belt clip, it's 11 cm high, 6.5 cm wide, and 2.5 cm thick. (That's about 4-1/2 inches x 2-1/2" x 1".) The antenna adds another 6.5 cm (2-1/2") to the height on one side, and the convenient off/on/volume knob 1 cm (1/2") to the other. One unit weighs about 180 grams (6 ounces) with the batteries.

SCANNING: The PR950 has 22 channels: 7 FRS (Family Radio Service, channels 8-14), 8 GMRS (General Mobile Radio Service, channels 15-22), and 7 FRS/GMRS (channels 1-7). It has CTCSS (Continuous Tone Controlled Squelch System) with 38 codes per channel. Unfortunately, it can scan only the main channels, the codes within one channel, or the up-to-ten codes in its memory. For example, let's say that someone is transmitting on channel 6, code 17; your scan would be able to find that channel 6 is active, but then you have to do a second scan to determine that code 17 is the one being used. I find simultaneous channel-and-code scanning easier to use. Also, it takes five presses of the "mode" button to start scanning; I would have preferred a separate button.

BATTERY LIFE: In the manual, is given as 24 hours in a "1:1:18 ratio" (I think that means that it is tested when transmitting 5%, receiving 5%, and doing neither 90% of the time). That's a pretty long battery life compared with the competition. The selectable high/low (2 or 0.5 watt) power output on GMRS channels helps save the batteries.

OTHER NOTES: The LCD display has a lot of information, such as signal strength meter, whether power saver is on, etc. A button on the side toggles the backlight and also toggles the monitor-a-single-channel feature (called "Maximum Range Extender"). The wrist strap attaches to the bottom of the PR 950. There are speaker and microphone jacks at the top and a charger jack on the side; all three jacks have rubber covers. The 10 outgoing call tones are useful; when people call you, you can choose to be alerted by call tone, by vibration, or both. The voice activation (VOX) mode with five sensitivity settings worked fine for hands-free transmissions. The end-of-transmission tones or "roger beep" can be turned on or off. You can turn off the keystroke tones and can lock the Channel, Mode, and Enter buttons.

CONCLUSION: Buy this excellent 2-way radio at Amazon.com!

These radios sound great - they are clear and crisp and the battery life is great. I also like the way the lock feature works and the fact that you can select high/low power at the touch of a button.

However, I bought a set of two of these, and at one point or another, both of them have refused to turn off. Turn the knob to the off position, it clicks to off, but the radio stays on. One of them works pretty well, only exhibiting this behavior occasionally, but the other one never turns off. Put the batteries in, it's on until they die (luckily that's a long time with these radios).

Secondly, they don't handle cold weather well at all.
Try this: Take one snowboarding, but leave it turned off. After about an hour or two of boarding you'll feel a vibration in your pocket. Yes, the thing has turned itself on, kicked itself into vibrate mode and started vibrating. But there's no display on the LCD! It still thinks it's turned off.

So Cobra, if you are listening, getting the thing to turn off shouldn't be a big technical challenge for you - engineers have been very successfully designing devices that turn off going all the way back to the invention of the light bulb.

I've had a pair of these radios for about 2 years and I've been happy with them. The transmission is clear and easy to understand. I've never really tested them for range. I've tried them in town (flat terrain, 1 or 2 story houses) and they receive up to a mile or so, which is as far as I've ever tried them. If you're next to high voltage power lines the range may be much less. A buddy and I have used them fishing from Kayaks on lakes. They worked well when we were a good ways apart on the lakes with islands and shore line between us. I was well pleased with their performance there. We've used the voice activated mode some. They work well, so well we had to turn the sensitivity down so that their rubbing in a fishing vest pocket didn't activate them. My wife and I have used them around the house more than anything though that wasn't why I bought them. Sometimes we even use them between rooms in the house or I sometimes have one when I'm working out in the back yard or shop and one in the house to communicate with my wife. They've worked well and I haven't had any problem at all with them in the two years we've had them. Battery life is good. I've had building project going in the back yard for about 3 weeks and we used them a lot during that time. I would occasionally ask her to come out and help with something. Most of the time they were just on and not transmitting - which is the usual anyway but they went for several days on a set of batteries that had already been in the radios for a while.

The seller refused to fulfill my purchase because the seller did not want to stand by the price at which the item was offered for sale. I received an automated message from Amazon indicating that the seller cancelled my purchase, and my purchase price was refunded. I would not recommend doing business with this seller.