While I find the VFO to memory storage tedious (and not covered in the manual but with YouTube, who cares?) and the lack of automatic repeater splits a pain, for the price I'm amazed at how well it performs

The chore of turning off the radio and holding down the menu button to switch from vfo mode to channel mode is a little pain

Just picked up this radio to replace a Wouxon radio that has known factory defects that they wont fix as well as to replace my Anytone mobile radio that was stolen when my car was broken into and i must i a pleasantly surprised by the quality and function

Programs weird a and software is flakey but the hardware is rock solid and (as a ham

It just /works/, it works as you'd expect, it feels GREAT, it sounds GREAT, audio reports are GREAT, battery life is /insanely great/ in comparison to the UV-5R, its subtle operating changes to be more efficient than the 5R are

Programming the radio is just as easy as the 5R as it uses the same operating system

They are a little longer than the Bao Feng UV5R, which I like as it fits my hand better.

I'm guessing the radio has increased in popularity as it has suffered from price creep, now at $49 here on Amazon

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