Two-Way-Radio Reviews

This is the best for the money. I successfully used these at Disney World. The DCS codes cut off the first word, so you have to "learn" to use it, but it did come in handy for crowded airwaves (no other radio's I know of have them). The CTCSS codes are a little better and are compatible with other FRS radio's. My daughter left one outside all night through a thunderstorm. It was soaked. After emptying the water, drying it out all night and replacing the batteries it worked just fine! (and she didn't have to spend her allowance on a new one). Makes me feel good about using them for skiing this winter. There is only one call tone and it's a little annoying. There is no vibrate alert. One set of batteries lasted the week at Disney. If your not using them everyday, I see no need for the charger. In all, great for the money.

I got 3 of these Midland 75-515's for family bike trips, but I've found that they're useful for much more: trips to the mall, skiing, all kinds of situations. I had previously bought and returned some other FRS radios, because I found that they lacked some necessary features (like call tones). What I like about these particular radios is that they have a large number of subcodes (38 CTSS codes and ~83 digital squelch tones) that screen out other peoples obnoxious comments (go to an amusement park and you will NOT be able to use FRS radios unless you can screen out moronic profane comments). The channel lock feature is a must also. Despite all the features, it's pretty simple to use (my nine year old has no problems with it). They're also really small, which helps when you have to carry one on a bike all day. The range is somewhere over 1.5 miles outside on the road, with only trees blocking your way. From car to car, it's probably about 3/4 miles based on my limited tests. So, the obstructions in between senders affects the reception, but overall, I was pleased with the range and clarity of the sound. In my opinion, I got a lot of features for the money, and the radios are very useful

Review of the Midland 75-515 FRS Transceiver

This unit has a nice "Walkie Talkie" look to it. I have been disturbed by the unusual designs of many radios. I am glad Midland decided to keep with the more traditional look.

Upon powering up the radio, it indicated its awakening with a prominent tone. The LCD display is large and easily viewed. The only trouble I had was viewing the upper part of the display, where the CTCSS and DCS mode indicators are. Other than that, the display is VERY well laid out and easy to read.

Volume levels are pretty darn loud for such a small speaker. Receive audio qualiy is pretty good. It is easily understood.

Range checks: This unit was detectable 1.5 miles away with my wife inside our house and myself in the car. Effective communications were possible with one mile distance between us. In a mobile environment, I consider this range to be VERY good for an FRS radio.

Also, we were in communication with myself inside the grocery store about .25 miles from the house... Perfect communications was a result while shopping. These units can communicate well between buildings.

Power output is 500 mW ERP, verified by FCC test data. This applies to use of fully charged alkaline batteries. We used the nicad rechargeables for our tests.

The battery life as listed, is pretty good. I have yet to have had my rechargeable go dead, and I've used the radios a bit. although I do admit some charging time.

Intermod and other interference: We experienced no intermod. In our area, though, this is not unusual. We are out of the range of many dirty pager transmitters and such. My computer did interfere with this radio to a small degree... again not surprising. Personal computers commonly interfere with UHF receivers.

Features and evaluations of such:

DCS: Digital Coded Squelch comes to FRS!! This system is the latest in selective squelch systems. It is reported to be more efficient than CTCSS. We used it in our tests and it performed perfectly, even at maximum range.

CTCSS: In case you want to communicated with units without DCS, CTCSS is there for you to use. As expected, the CTCSS system worked perfectly.

Our "home channel" had additional traffic when we were conducting our tests. Our communications was not interrupted by the other signal.

SCAN: This radio can scan for active channels, and clear channels. I would have like to seen a way to lock out unneeded channels; but you can set a CTCSS tone, or DCS code, which will allow the scan function to skip over that channel, unless that code has traffic. With that in mind, the radio scans whatever characteristic you have programmed with that channel. This is useful if you want to scan your group's channels and thay have CTCSS or DCS set.

BABY MONITOR FUNCTION: This function will sit and listen for any noise in its range, sound the call tone and transmit for a period of time, then go to receive mode, and back and forth. It does work as indicated, but we have no use for it (until we get a young 'un). However, it could be useful in many other ways, such as listening for the doorbell, or the microwave beep to go off. Use your imagination...

END OF TRANSMISSION TONE: AKA Roger Beep. It is there, if you wish, and can be turned off if you do not wish.

BATTERY SAVE FUNCTION: during recive, except for scanning, sort of puts the radio to sleep until it receives a signal. Good for unnecessary drain on batteries... Problem though... It takes about a half second or so for it to wake up, so it is likely you will miss the first word or so of your communications. The delay is a bit short for my tastes. Too bad you can't turn it off.

5 MEMORY CHANNELS: This allows you to set up a channel and keep its characteristics set. While this radio holds any Tones or Codes you may set for a channel permanently, the memory function allows you to store the same channel as a memory location. You could have channel 1 as your primary channel, with a differtnt DCS or CTCSS tone set. Too bad this radio doesn't allow memory channel scan.

VOX: This unit allows voice activiation right out of the box. with or without a spaeker mike, you can talk hands free. Good to mount a radio on the sunvisor :) With a selectable sensitivity and selectable delay setting, the VOX on this unit is the best I have seen so far. If you use VOX, this radio can't be beat IMHO.

BATTERY STRENGTH METER: This is a 4 segment LCD that will give you your battery charge state.

TRANSMIT/RECEIVE INDICATOR: Will display the appropriate icon. It will indicate when a channel is receiving a signal, so you can see actibity on another CTCSS or DCS code.

ACCESSORY JACKS: These units have TWO sets of jacks! You will be able to plug almost anything into this radio.

CHARGING CONTACTS: The radio can be charged with a desk charger OR an AC adaptor type charger.... Versatile!

FINAL COMMENTS:

This radio is a clear Winner!

It has a nice look and feel, good sound quality, and range. Plenty of good functions. I have in the past, heard of problems with this series, however, I have discovered NO flaws whatsoever in the operation of these units. The multiple accessory/charging jacks are unique to the industry and allow for greater flexibility. Kudos to Midland for a job well done.

We got these for the kids at Christmas, and have had no problems at all. They are easy for the kids to use, and seem to be built much more solidly than many low cost products. The display is easy to read, and controls very easy to operate. We have not changed the batteries since Christmas (5 months now), although they have not been used for long periods of continuous operation. I have no idea how many total hours they have been used. My wife and I use them to stay in contact with the kids at home when we walk in the neighborhood, and find them to be quite clear at about 1/2 mile. We live in a rural area with very little other interference, but found that at Grandma's house in town that it was sometimes hard to find a channel that someone else was not using. Overall this is a very good value, and works well.

These radio's are good for short distance communication. Don't expect them to work all the 2-miles as advertised. Most radio's won't work in that range if you & the receiver are both not in open with no interfernce around.
The radio's look very cool. And they work on 3 AA batteries. You can buy 4 Nimh rechargable ones for just 10 bucks at any target store or here.
The best part about these is that they don't have any antenna hanging out (to be broken with use) and they could be conviently hung with the clip they already have. They don't come with all kinds of fancy features, just the necessary ones.
Even if the quality is not the best, they have the best looks & comfort of use compared to other FRS's around.
And finally they are much cheaper compared to others, you can get one between 10 to 15 dollars at circuitcity or here.

I am very pleased with this pair of Uniden radios...The sound quality has been good; the call feature has a good tone; and the clip makes it extremely convenient to take along. I highly recommend this brand and model...they have and are serving me very well!

We got these for the kids at Christmas, and have had no problems at all. They are easy for the kids to use, and seem to be built much more solidly than many low cost products. The display is easy to read, and controls very easy to operate. We have not changed the batteries since Christmas (5 months now), although they have not been used for long periods of continuous operation. I have no idea how many total hours they have been used. My wife and I use them to stay in contact with the kids at home when we walk in the neighborhood, and find them to be quite clear at about 1/2 mile. We live in a rural area with very little other interference, but found that at Grandma's house in town that it was sometimes hard to find a channel that someone else was not using. Overall this is a very good value, and works well.

These radio's are good for short distance communication. Don't expect them to work all the 2-miles as advertised. Most radio's won't work in that range if you & the receiver are both not in open with no interfernce around.
The radio's look very cool. And they work on 3 AA batteries. You can buy 4 Nimh rechargable ones for just 10 bucks at any target store or here.
The best part about these is that they don't have any antenna hanging out (to be broken with use) and they could be conviently hung with the clip they already have. They don't come with all kinds of fancy features, just the necessary ones.
Even if the quality is not the best, they have the best looks & comfort of use compared to other FRS's around.
And finally they are much cheaper compared to others, you can get one between 10 to 15 dollars at circuitcity or here.

I am very pleased with this pair of Uniden radios...The sound quality has been good; the call feature has a good tone; and the clip makes it extremely convenient to take along. I highly recommend this brand and model...they have and are serving me very well!

I purchased two of these units for use in shopping centers and on cruise ships. My wife and I had previously used a pair of older Motorola FRS radios, which were just not powerful enough to transmit through all that steel. We used the T7200 units today for the first time and they worked as advertised. We had complete coverage anwhere throughout the Mall of George, in Atlanta (a VERY large multi-level mall). Transmissions were strong and crystal clear (MUCH better sound than our older units). The weather channels also work very well and we listened to them all the way back to North Carolina. My only complaint with the T7200 is that the volume of the call tone is keyed to the level of the position of the volume button on the radio. If the volume level is accidently turned down (which happened to us once), the call tone cannot be heard when the unit is inside a pocket book or bag. This is a minor complaint and should not stop someone from buying the T7200. When it happened to us, my wife did not hear the call tone, but she did hear my spoken message, while the radio was inside her purse. Just be careful if you're not carrying the unit in the supplied belt holster. The T7200 is a great radio.....very functional and built like a tank! I would have given the T7200 4 1/2 stars, but the choice was either 4 or 5.

I purchased these radios for use in a heavily wooded, hilly state park in West Virginia that has no cell service. They performed very well up to about 1.5 miles. After that the performance varied depending on terrain. Each of three families had one yellow radio in their cabin and we kept them on continuously for one week (much of the time in the charging cradle).

These radios can be used in voice activated mode without accessories, and hence can be used as a reliable baby monitor, for eg (although going 1.5 miles from your sleeping child may not be such a good idea). Turning off the tone-coded squelch (interference eliminator codes) seems to increase the range a bit since you don't miss weak messages. In rural areas you will be alone on the channel anyway. We also have a pair of motorola T5820 1 watt radios. Those radios, while smaller, had a range that was about half of the T7200s and had inferior sound (although more then passable). The T5820 did not have the eavesdrop reducer code feature so we turned that feature off on the T7200s as well.

Battery life on the T7200s using NiMH is as advertised (13 hr or so in standard use). The charging cradle works well for these radios. you can charge the radio while it is still in its belt holtster and you can leave the radio on so you won't miss messages. Note that w/o the charging cradle, you can't charge the radio and leave it in voice-activated mode turned on because you charge it through the headphone accessory port and that cuts out the speaker. So the cradle is really needed for extended use.

The main limitation of these radios is figuring out a use for them. In most places cell phones work better (if a little less fun) and are much smaller. we used the T7200s while tandem driving and that was fun. i think a headset would make them even better for that use (we did not have headsets).

In terms of size, they are definitely big enough that you are aware that the radio is hanging from your belt. I was able to play golf with the radio in the belt clip, however, without any problem.

I'm a communications officer for an Army aviation battalion currently located in Baghdad, Iraq. When we first got here soldiers (to include myself) were purchasing the smaller Motorola radios to augment communications. After a few months though, the unit was able to purchase 118 of the 7200s with operational funds. It was a good investment. There are plenty of channel presets available to avoid crossover with other units using similiar radios. The 5900 series radios, while also listed as "up to 5 miles" were never up to the task. They would barely push 2 miles on fairly open terrain. This radio, however, does seem up to task. The 5900s would give me about a day on a single charge. This radio, the 7200, gets me a little over two 12 hour work days. I haven't seen how far it can go but it doesn't have a lot of problems cutting through the the large metal hangars scattered throughout our area. Now that we've used this radio no one wants to go back to the other smaller Motorola radios we have. There's really no comparison in range or quality.

*One note though, none of the radios on the US FRS or GMRS bands (roughly 460-470 MHz) are compatable with the European unlicensed radio bands. Those run about 440 MHz.*

This is a good radio for a flight line or other open work site and the rechargeable batteries are key to keeping operating costs down.

If you are looking for the most bang for your buck, this is it. In this price-range you just cannot beat the performance and features of this radio. The compact size is perfect for tight spaces and the modern design looks great. I highly recomend this CB.

The previous review that mentions antennas are key to a good CB setup is correct. For a normal CB user I would recommend either the Wilson lil' Wil or the Wilson 500 antenna. Both are magnetic mount antennas. The lil' Wil antenna is a relatively small antenna and it's only around $39.00. Actually any Wilson CB antenna will be fine. Also, to do a good job at setting up your antenna you should purchase an SWR meter. They are not expensive. You only need the meter connected inline between the radio and antenna when you are adjusting the antenna. Once you are done adjusting the antenna you can take the meter out of the connection and connect the antenna directly to the radio. Don't be fooled by cheap ordinary CB antennas like you will find at radio shack. Do not settle for anything less then a Wilson antenna. Cobra and Uniden both make fabulous CB radios so either make will be fine.

This CB is the best CB I have had in my life time and I already had 3 CB's besides this one and this one is the best of them. Its unique design and mobility can set up to a cigarette lighter in your car or truck although you might want an adaptor since it only comes with the cords and nothing to plug into the cigarette lighter. When you are talking to someone else your voice goes to them crystal clear and there voice is crystal clear too. I have not found yet why it has a sound tracker system since it does not clear the signal up anyway all it does is make it louder. Although it clears it up a small bit of the signal. When talking to someone squelch becomes useful to get rid of the static. This Cb is a best buy especially with the super saver shipping and no tax

These radios are great. I had purchased other radios and I heard alot of people talking on them and cursing.I returned them and ordered these online. The only one minor thing was the Disney character sounds that come on each time you want to speak is a little annoying.It's not a big deal because I rather here that then other people talking on them . So far I haven't heard anyone talking on them, I guess the special feature that these radios have, they are codes you could select to eliminate hearing others on the radios. But most of all these phones were a great buy for the quality.

I ordered these to use on away games for our cheerleaders. They work great for tracking who is going where. My five year old daughter, and four year old neice use them as toys. I personally like them because they are cute. I recommend them to anyone with kids, or just loves to feel like one!

Personally I find these annoying, BUT they aren't for me! My girls love them, and play with them all the time. I guess I consider them the best judges... Be warned, you as a parent may not enjoy these, but if you have multiple children of appropriate ages these are highly recommended!

These radios are great. I had purchased other radios and I heard alot of people talking on them and cursing.I returned them and ordered these online. The only one minor thing was the Disney character sounds that come on each time you want to speak is a little annoying.It's not a big deal because I rather here that then other people talking on them . So far I haven't heard anyone talking on them, I guess the special feature that these radios have, they are codes you could select to eliminate hearing others on the radios. But most of all these phones were a great buy for the quality.

I ordered these to use on away games for our cheerleaders. They work great for tracking who is going where. My five year old daughter, and four year old neice use them as toys. I personally like them because they are cute. I recommend them to anyone with kids, or just loves to feel like one!

Personally I find these annoying, BUT they aren't for me! My girls love them, and play with them all the time. I guess I consider them the best judges... Be warned, you as a parent may not enjoy these, but if you have multiple children of appropriate ages these are highly recommended!

These radios are great. I had purchased other radios and I heard alot of people talking on them and cursing.I returned them and ordered these online. The only one minor thing was the Disney character sounds that come on each time you want to speak is a little annoying.It's not a big deal because I rather here that then other people talking on them . So far I haven't heard anyone talking on them, I guess the special feature that these radios have, they are codes you could select to eliminate hearing others on the radios. But most of all these phones were a great buy for the quality.

I ordered these to use on away games for our cheerleaders. They work great for tracking who is going where. My five year old daughter, and four year old neice use them as toys. I personally like them because they are cute. I recommend them to anyone with kids, or just loves to feel like one!

Personally I find these annoying, BUT they aren't for me! My girls love them, and play with them all the time. I guess I consider them the best judges... Be warned, you as a parent may not enjoy these, but if you have multiple children of appropriate ages these are highly recommended!

The problem is the reception range, which is miserable. Clear reception is for only a couple of hundred feet, provided there are no obstacles. The signal disappears completely at about 1/2 of a mile. However, in the Magic Kingdom park of Disneyworld in Florida, we had difficulty maintaining any communication at all, probably due to a lot of buildings and steel structures around. Therefore, I consider these units as not a real communications devices, but rather just children's toys. Also, in this case, clearly, you get what you pay for: the item is cheap and it works like a cheap item.

The Motorola Talkabout T5420 is a great radio if your looking for an inexpensive way to keep in touch. Like most radios, don't expect this to get to 2 miles, more in the 1-1/2 mile range. When I was hiking mount modadnock I got about a mile of these which is pretty good considering all the trees and rocks. My freind also brought along an Audiovox FR-540 Radio which also had a 2-mile range but proved to be better becuase of its clearer voice, smaller size, and got a bit more range than the motorola's. (I'd reccomend those if you don't want to get a license but want a good radio). I've also noticed that these radios sometimes having a longer range (and clearer voice) than my freinds 5 mile version, and a clearer voice. Overall, a good product well worth the money!

Purchased two and they are working great! We use them to talk between cars on the road. Excellent value.

Its hard to beat the price. Most radios would cost more without a charger! But there is a catch. The radio output is 0.5W. Far less than the 2.0W allowed by GMRS. So this radio is only as good as a FRS radio with 7 extra GMRS channels.

But bare in mind that using GMRS radios require a license. If you are buying this for a child and not getting a license. It is like teaching him it is okay to break the law. And if you know what you are doing, why bother breaking the law for a half-baked GMRS radio?

What a pleasant surprise! Because these were so inexpensive, I was skeptical as to whether they would work for our intended purpose. We purchased these radios so that my husband could contact me from his workshop which is separate from our house. Except when he was running his power equipment, these radios came in loud and clear through several thicknesses of walls. The only reason I didn't rate these a "5" is because the instructions are terrible and took both of us to decipher. I'd recommend these to anyone.

I've wanted a pair of 'shopping radios' for a long time. They needed to be rechargeable and come with batteries and charger. They also needed to be the slightly more powerful GMRS radios, not the weak FRS. These fit all categories.

What I was not prepared for was the price. I found these on a shelf below the GMRS peg wall at Wal-Mart, with no price indication. All the other GMRS packages with batteries and chargers were priced at $59.99 and above. I took this package to the register to ask what it cost. When the man scanned it he said, $20.

Needless to say, I bought them. Now whenever my family goes anywhere--to the park, to the mall, wherever, I have one of these and my wife has the other. They have no problem covering an entire mall while remaining intelligible. Outdoors, they are even better. There is absolutely no way any other brand new $20 product can touch these.

Sure, you can spend hundreds and get GPS or greater range, better clarity or longer battery life (these are actually very good in the battery-life department) but will it be a hundred dollars better? Only if you have to have GPS. In that case sure.

If you are like the other 98% of us, these radios will satisfy you in all the ways that matter, and any extra money you spend on fancier versions will be wasted.