18 out of 18 people found this review helpful.
Excelent Value for an FRS radio. Great Range, Water resistant
Date of Review: Mar 19, 2002
The Bottom Line: Excellent for the price, Great for anyone on a budget. Definately has more features than any other radios in that price range.
I purchased this pair of radios from Costco for $128CDN ($80US), so it was a steal. It wasn't so much that $80US for 2 radios was a steal, but the fact that it came with 2 sets of NiMH rechargable batteries and a desktop charger for 2 radios. Those batteries and charger alone would have cost as much as the radios themselves.
I purchased the radios for outdoor snowboarding/camping use, but i have used them indoors walking around malls and at the local huge grocery stores, and for shopping at costco too :).
I'll first go over the good points of the radio:
Value, as i explained in the previous paragraphs. It is a great deal. Any other radio that i could find with 14channel/38sub would have been around $50+ each.. about $100 for the set, and without the batteries. If i had bought on ebay, i could have probably gotten them cheaper or close to the same price... but this way i know i'm getting a real warrantied product.
Durability. I dropped these radios quite a few times in the couple months i've owned them. They still work great. I've dropped them in the snow and gotten them all wet, and they still work. They dont look like water-resistant radios, but they are, and I know that they are from experience.
Thin. These radios are really thin.. i like that.. they dont create a lot of bulk in your pocket, but they are rather "tall". I prefer tall and thin over short and bulky, tho. So to some people this may not be a good thing.
They have great range.. i noticed no difference between these radios and the Motorola 6200's that i used before that had belonged to my friend. We used them on the mountain when snowboarding and never had a problem getting a hold of each other regardless of location. For the record, the mountain we ride is big with 50 ski runs.
The batteries that came with it provide about 20 hours of regular use time.. some standby and some talk time. Charge time with the batteries it came with about 2 1/2 - 3 hours for a full charge.
Cons:
Buttons too easy to bump. Although the radios have a lock button so even if you do bump the buttons when they are in your pocket, its rather annoying to constantly hear the "beep beep" when you hit a button that is locked. Every time i bend over to put on my bindings for my snowboard... "beep beep". Its rather annoying. But functionally, it doesn't really affect the unit.
The Battery Meter. I dont know if this is because of the NiHM batteries including with the units, but the meter almost ALWAYS says "full" 4 bars out of 4. I've only seen one of the units show 3 out of 4 once.. and then it died within a couple hours. They have a pretty good life, but its a little annoying to not know how much is left. I did put some old AAA batteries from my remote controls into the radios to see what the battery meters would say, and they showed half battery full.. so they meters themselves work.. but i think it might have trouble detecting the life of the rechargables due to them only having 2 contact points as opposed to 8.
Overall:
These are great for the price. They aren't feature loaded. No scan button, but there's 14/38 channels, and there is a lock feature.. water resistant.. backlight.. its all there.
I would recommend these to anyone on a budget that doesn't want to sacrifice quality.
