Nothing to call home about

The wife and I had been using a pair of relatively expensive ICOM IC4008As for several years, keeping them stored in the minivan so that they were readily available for us to keep in touch on shopping excursions. However, the range was limited, as are most FRS radios, and it seemed that the batteries were always ready to die when we needed them. Spotting the Uniden GMRS680s with a claim of 5 mile range, and a convenient desktop charger, at such an attractive price, seemed to be the solution. The display was bigger, the unit was lighter, the small fixed antenna was preferable to the flip-out flexible antenna on the Icoms. Perhaps an adapter could be found to use the desk top charger in the minivan.

There were two other annoyances with the Icoms that the Unidens seemed to alleviate. With the Icoms, in order to ring the other receiver, one had to push and hold the transmit button and then push the down channel button. If the channel was not locked, and one pushed the down channel button first, the channel was changed, perhaps unnoticed, and communication was lost. The Uniden eliminated that problem by providing a separate "call" button. On the Icoms, the rotary volume knob on the top frequently was turned down accidentally, and one could not hear the ring tone. The Uniden had up/down volume buttons which kept the volume at a preset level unless intentionally changed. We thought the solution to our woes with the Icoms was in hand.

Our exuberance was quickly dashed. According to the instructions, if you lock on a channel with the Unidens, it is unlocked each time you turn the unit off. Stepping through the menu each time to lock the channel is annoying. The Icoms allowed one to lock on to a channel and stay locked on even when power was turned off, so that when turning the unit back on, the channel was locked. On both the Unidens and the Icoms, when you "call" the other unit, your own unit rings. This is a bit annoying when you would prefer to be inconspicuous while walking down the aisle in WalMart. It is easier to rotate the volume knob on the Icoms to reduce the sound, rather than punch the volume up/down buttons on the Unidens. The Uniden's "call" is a fixed warble about 4 seconds long, while the Icoms ring only as long as one holds the "down" button, a bit more desirable.

It wasn't until we opened the package and dug out the instructions that we found that the claim of a 5 mile range was only on the GMRS channels, the use of which requires an FCC license. Legal or not, I decided to test the Unidens vs the Icoms under the same conditions. Putting a fresh set of 4 AAA batteries in the Unidens, and with the better half in the kitchen (where she belongs), she monitored one Uniden while I walked around the neighborhood on a route where there were many houses between me and the Mrs., in order to simulate the conditions we might find in the Mall, with many buildings between us. I used one of the Uniden's GMRS "5 Mile Range" channels. I didn't get more than a block and a half away from the house, when the radio started breaking up and conversation became difficult. That would be about the range from one corner to the opposite in a Super WalMart. I returned home, disappointed, and we repeated the test using the Icoms with fresh batteries.

At the same point where the Unidens started breaking up, so did the Icoms, using the FRS channels. Without any real improvement in range from the Unidens claiming a "5 mile range", it just wasn't worth keeping them. Even without the Icoms as a benchmark for the performance of FRS radios, we would have been sorely disappointed on the range of the Unidens. If they claim 5 miles, I would think we would expect to communicate at least one mile across the mall. There is no way that would happen if these units start breaking up at 1/4 mile with a few houses between the line of sight.