Not as great as it sounds

I purchased the Motorola Talkabout T8500R to use on hiking trips and occasionally when going to parks with larger groups like Disney World. The advertised range of 18 miles was fairly unrealistic in almost any environment. At most we got around 10 miles before the signals were lost.

The voice quality of the Talkabout T8500R was also not that great. With the volume halfway it was hard to make out words and even with the volume at max, sound was often muffled. Many times we resorted to looking at our cellphones hoping to see if we had signals.

The nice features of the Talk about T8500 R is the 22 main channels and 120 some privacy codes which comes in helpful when at a park like Disney World where everyone is jabbering on a two way radio. For hiking, the included NOAA weather radio bands and weather alert feature is useful when spending days in the wilderness.

The T8500R also comes with rechargeable batteries and base but can take AA alkaline batteries as well.

Overall, for the price and touted features, the T8500R misses on the most important features, sound quality and effective range. The purpose of buying this two way was to make communication possible in environments where cellular phones had no access and Satellite phones would be overkill. For myself, the search continues.