FRS-Two-Way-Radio Reviews

This item only goes two miles.They mite say they are good for skiing and hiking but the trees reduce the miles. thank you for reading this!

do not bye them

These radios are pretty robust, solid, and do their job well. They even work with headsets for Talkabout 250s (but don't try to use the VOX feature). An excellent value for the price.

I purchased these radios a month ago. The range of these radios is outstanding. The clarity is superb. The call feature is useful and so is the scan button. There are two buttons on the side this can be confusing. The top button is used to talk and the bottom is used to turn the squelch off. (So you can monitor very weak signals) At first it was hard to get used to, but after a while it becomes second nature. Extremely great value for the price.

These are better than the FRS that are advertised with a 2 mile range. I live in suburbia, and tested these out. Range was from 1-2.5 miles within the city (and I'm being very generous)!

The radios offer some nice features, but after paying $75 for a 5 year FCC lisc. I expected a significant improvement in the range of the radio.

In case you havent read the other reviews,these radios DO NOT have ANY NOAA channels. I just purchased these at a pawn shop for *cheap* and they work great. They are worth the price listed here. I do not have an FCC license (~yet~) but still use GMRS and wow can I tell the difference from the countless FRS radios I own. For starters, as with any new technology, there a significantly smaller number of users of GMRS as compared to FRS,thus making a drastically reduced crowdedness. I get great reception and love this product.

We purchased this set of radios for a Christmas present, and based on the description provided...the impression is that "everything's included", right? Wrong. We did receive the radios, and the rechargeable batteries and chargers were in a seperate little box, but thrown in with the radios in the Amazon box. (Should have known something was not right when we saw that) We inserted the batteries, and then immediately tried to hook them up to the chargers, only to find out the chargers are NOT compatible with the radios. They don't fit! We called Midland directly to find out if we were doing something wrong...and they informed us that the chargers included with this set only work if you BUY MORE DEVICES TO PLUG THEM INTO!!! They also indicated that they can only assume that Amazon does not know this and is selling it all as a package. Unless you plan on going out and spending more money on another accessory, stay away from this particular "deal". Waste of money and time. Amazon did issue us a refund...so kudos to them for that--but more importantly I think they need to revise or remove this item as it is very deceiving.

I took my chance on gettings these radios hopeing that they
would surely have the problem fixed buy now. I received them today and had forgot about the reviews about the missing adapters until I tried to charge them. Sure hope they get the problem fixed.

I too was missing the adapters. While they have pointed me to Midland I don't think I should have to be the one to talk to them and solve this. If this hadn't happened before, I would be more understanding, but obviously from the last poster's comments... it has... more than once.

This definately puts a ding in my otherwise unblemished dealings with amazon over the last 4 years.

Be warned that if you get this set, you may have one more step before they will work.

The Freetalk FRS handsets I purchased seem to work fine (range was OK and voice was clear). However, after time I detected a design flaw that is most frustrating - the batterries drain fairly rapidly when the unit is turned off. The resistance across the batteries terminals when the unit is allegedly off lends to frustration when you reach for the radios in times of need. I sent the service center a request for help that has gone unanswered. Poor service and poor battery performance means - Don't buy these.

These radios seem to give the most bang for the buck!!! People with kids will surely love these. I have field tested my radios and I cannot complain at all. The only con someone may have is the lack of sub codes. The reception was clearer than I had expected. I like the ability to use regular batteries instead of the rechargeable battery in some radios...

I needed two radios for my kids to use while I have my Motorola. I wanted something good quality without worrying about my kids breaking a $100 radio. These offer the same performance as anything I have used and I DON'T NEED TO WORRY AS MUCH IF THE GET LOST OR STOLEN. These are the best for the money.

I purchased this for $... at Staples but they have discontinued it. They must know something...
It is loaded with a lot of nice features like channel scan, selectable call tones and a few others not normally found at this price. I haven't fully tested the range but it seems just as good as any other frs radio. I especially like the charger stand and the batteries by themselves can run you $... and they are included! That's the good part. The volume output is marginal - you can forget hearing anything from this radio in a high noise area. The button driven menu is not very intuitive leading you to not bother using some features because you can't figure out how to get to them. One of the radios broke in the first week of use (would not transmit voice), so the 90-day warranty has to be viewed as a liability (even though I got to take advantage of it - UGH!). I'll never buy a product with a 90-day warranty again. These days, a company should stand behind their product longer than 3 months!!!

I just bought these radios today. I had a little trouble getting used to how to change channels and the like. Also, the menu felt clumsy.

I haven't got the chance yet to try them out over a distance, but I expect them to perform well.

My favorite feature: the call feature (which DOES work between brands) has different tones to choose from, even songs!!

I originally purchased these back in December 01 so my wife and I could talk back and forth while driving from Iowa to Ohio when we moved. We drove seperate cars and wanted to be able to coordinate breaks and stuff as we drove with our kids. I charged these up the night before we left and drove with them for well over 12 hours using them the whole time. They came in handy as we had to travel through a snow storm and it was difficult to keep in sight of each other. The range is great. We were getting at least two miles as advertised. Now that we are in our new home and live near relatives my daughter grabs one as she heads out the door to Grandma's and we can keep track of her while walking through the yards to get there and she can let us know when she's safely inside. As for the buttons being difficult we don't have a problem. Variable volume control is great and so are all the different call signals. Durablity has been good as well. Batteries have held up and still will hold a charge for days on standby.

Much like a computer, the GPS manages to freeze and crash the system. Though it easily starts back at the same place by turning the unit on and off, the freezes are all too frequent - perhaps this is version 1.0 of the software. I would not buy it for the GPS portion of the unit.
On the radio side, I have only used the FRS portion so cannot comment on the GMRS portion of the radio. It seems to work, though on the FRS portion, it certainly has no more range that my Motorola Talkabouts.
I believe the editorial review is out of date or incorrect. The FCC license is $..., not $.... It was changed on September 10th, but that was before the Audiovox was released by three months. ....

I recently purchased one of the GMRS / FRS / GPS tranceivers. It works great. I have one of the original Magellian GPS's from the days when they first came out. It has many of the same features however, the speed of finding GPS sattelites is much faster. Also, the radio features work great.

Great product, has a great radio and a easy to use gps. If you are thinking about buying a gps. Think: is it easy, does it have everything i need, and is it at a good price, Well this has it all.

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.

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!

For an FRS unit, it is not bad. My only problem with this unit is that you have no channel lock. If you accidentally bump the channel changer, you will not hear anyone trying to contact you.

I bought these because I was splitting the package with one of my friends. when we tried them, since we don't use them at very far diatances, they worked great! where I live, there are a lot of buildings and trees, so for the distances we use them for, it is great! one of my other friends got the ones that has a charger and batteries for him and his brother, and the distance between us, they work with minimal to intermediate static, so they are fine. so, basically,they are the best to me.

This radio sounds good at first, but you will need to get an FCC license to operate this radio legally. Most people in the "FRS" market really don't need the extra power, cost and hassle of GMRS. So I'd label this radio "don't try this at home", unless you are a serious GMRS user.

We have purchased Motorola, Kenwood and now like the Midland 75-440 best. Best channel selection, call feature.

I've tried a few different FRS radios. I found this Kenwood model to have poor audio -- very muffled tones. No good! The whole purpose of a radio is to communicate, and it gets burdensome if you have to keep saying "What?" "What did you say?"

I bought this couple of weeks ago (...), and I brought it to Universal Studio Escape as well as to Disney with friends and I can't believe with clarity of sound ! It was crystal ! Despite the noisy crowd ,we were able to communicate without significant problem. Doesn't have any plug-in earpiece though, but hey ! what the heck ! no biggie ! For functionality, quality and prize, this is wise !

I've tried a lot of Walkie Takies and this one was the best. I would totally recomend this Walkie Talkie for anyone who wants a Walkie Talkie for their family use.