3800mAh TIDRADIO 8 Watt UV-5R Handheld Dual Band Ham Radio with Wireless Programmer

This is my third purchase of the UV5R series of radios. I purchased one during Prime Day and loved it so much I purchased 2 more (one a tri-band unit) and this kit. I wanted the larger battery and the car cable for the charger so I could leave this radio in my car instead of an expensive radio. The kit comes with everything you need to get started. With the supplied programming cable and using the Chirp software, I easily added all my local repeaters to the memories. I am a licensed ham radio operator. I took an FCC test many years ago to get my license. Now local ham clubs proctor the test. It is easy to get a license. You must have a license to use this radio. While many ads imply you can use this radio just like a cheap CB walkie-talkie or a GMRS radio, that is not true. This radio is not licensed for those bands. It is too powerful. This is a great radio for new hams or long time hams, like myself. The audio quality is great and the receiver volume is loud. It fits easily in your hand or your pocket, so you can take it anywhere. A quick internet search will provide several versions of a more detailed instruction manual and a quick search for "Chirp Ham software" will get you to the site for Chirp. Chirp works on Windows, Linux and Mac. I am using it on my iMac and it works great. I am glad I decided to buy these walkie-talkies.

There tons of bundle choices with several name variations/rebranding for the same radio. I am a research dork to the point where it's probably not healthy and found this to be the best value bundle, by a mile. The bundled USB cable to connect to CHIRP ($8+ on their own) are fuss-free plug and play for Windows (thank you!) and the large capacity battery ($15+ on its own) actually has a USB charging port. I bought the following USB charging cable and it works like a champ. Best value, hands-down! Link to the charging cable: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0915CJ4PZ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

For the price, a great value.

Perfect. Just getting in to ham radios. I researched my sellers and TIDRADIO Was the best so I ordered. The reviews are correct. This seller made it a pleasure and easy to get all information to use ham radio. Everything is in one box. Seems the usb cable works with windows 10 but It was difficult to get it to work on windows 10. It’s easier if you order a mirkit ftdi mod 3 red programming cable.

I bought two of these Walkie-Talkies in February of 2023 and both cradles overheat when connected to a cigarette lighter adapter no matter what the charge status of the walkie-talkie is. Tried it in a different vehicle (also a 12 Volt system) but they still overheat. Tidradio customer support said that they will get back with the factory. By the way: one of the cigarette lighter cables has also a broken wire inside the cable close to the plug on the cradles side which was not causing the overheating of the cradle but interrupted the charging process. The cradle starts to smell like fried electronics after a short amount of charging time. Don’t buy this kit. They refunded me the money for both kits.I edited this review:Today is the 24th of June 2023. Had to modify the cradle to be able to use it with the car cigarette lighter adapter so that the cradle does not overheat.I installed a large dropping resistor inside the cradle, to reduce the incoming voltage to a level where the charger does not overheat anymore. The dropping resistor causes a voltage drop and that causes the charging electronics in the cradle not to overheat.

Great deal works well and long range

I already have several HT's (Yaesu FT-279 and Wouxun KG-UVD1P), but since this not only came with aaalll the necessary accessories but was at such an amazing price, I decided to try it out.Issues:1. The "car charger" cable is just a plug for the charging base - NOT directly to the radio. The pictures seem to lead one to understand that it plugs into the 3800mAh battery (there is a power plug port in the battery itself you can plug into to essentially make it a battery eliminator when in your car). This was not the case2. The lanyard broke the first time I pulled on it slightly. Not a big deal. I just retied it.3. Settings menu issues - Whenever I go to change certain settings on my presets, they will not take. Examples: - WN (Wide/Narrowband Setting) - Navigated to WN, hit Menu to move down into the setting. Hit up arrow to change to WIDE. Hit Menu to leave out of that setting. Hit exit to get back to the main screen. If I hit Menu again from there to look at the setting again, it is set back to NARR.- Same behavior for SFT-D and OFFSET settings. The strange thing about this is... if I've programmed the radio with CHIRP, the offsets actually seem to be working. I can talk on SOME of my local repeaters fine. But in the relevant settings menu nothing seems to be set4. Finally, the reason I say SOME above is because this radio is not hitting about half of my local repeaters. I have tested with both of my other handsets on the exact same antenna and they hit them all fine. I have tested it with my SWR/Power meter and it's definitely putting out 8W, but I've seen reports on these having a lot of spurious emissions... I think this may be the case with mine.5. I am having seemingly random cutout of reception - audio will become chopped up and I can't make out anything. Has only happened on 1 repeater channel so far and was able to confirm it was not the repeater.I may request a refund or an exchange

Excellent little hand held package, especially for the price. Battery works great and range is excellent with the HT stand along and connected to other antennas.Programming was easy with the CHIRP application as the Baofeng UV-5R. Setting had different firmware, I did not try updating this.