I bought two BaoFeng UV-82HP radios for some outdoor adventures over the holidays. The radios came with two chargers, two headsets, and two sets of very detailed instructions written in actual English by a native speaker! Everything worked as advertised. I also ordered an adapter cable so I could hook my radios up to my laptop and program then with CHIRP software. The first time I hooked them up, I had to do some online searching for troubleshooting as the radio woudn't connect to chirp. I installed a couple drivers online, but I don't think this step was necessary, because it didn't resolve the issue. I turned off the radio, unpluged the radio from the cable, plugged it back in, powered it back on, restarted the CHIRP software, and IT SUDDENLY CONNECTED! My friend bought a TYT radio and he couldn't use chirp. His radio is great functionally, but he was pretty envious at how I could instantly reprogram both my radios via CHIRP in seconds, and to do the same would take him literally like an hour.
After initial setup, we took the radios out for a field test. My friend was on his TYT handset, and had my second UV-82HP as well to compare as I drove away from the house with my UV-82HP. He read me loud and clear in the city out to about 2.5 miles on my UV-82HP, but lost me after that. I was in a vehicle in the city and he was inside my house. With his TYT and a 15" whip antenna, he was able to communicate with my BF UV82-HP out to 3.5 miles in the city. We were reading loud and clear both ways until 3 miles, and could still communicate at 3.5, though the signal was broken.
On the highway, my friend and I used the UV82-HP for about 2 days of intermittent transmitting before I exhausted the battery. I don't know the exact runtime in hours, but suffice it to say these batteries will last through a full day of constant use easily. All our transmissions were loud and clear from vehicle to vehicle, and I never want to do another roadtrip without my BaoFeng!.
In the outdoors, we never reached a distance at which our signal became broken. On your average hiking trip, where you become separated at most by about a mile, you can easily communicate with these radios on medium, and usually low power! We rarely even used high power. I estimate the distance of the radio on high power outside of a vehicle in the forest if not separated by mountains is at least 3 miles, which is a LONG ways in the woods.
For the price, the radios are an outstanding value. They are super easy to program and use, and function very well in the hands of a beginner like myself. These were my first ever radio, and it took no time at all to get them up and running, and even communicating with other radios using unique privacy tones at specific frequencies. I recommend these for you first radio. The price is equal to the super cheap box-store radios with 2W max power, but these easily outperform them. You can't go wrong with these radios.
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4.4 out of 5
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Good Radio
Easy to program. Easy to operate. Mostly used for just listening to NOAA and scanning. Upgraded mine with a Nagoya NA-771R antenna and PTT handset.
