BTECH GMRS-V2 5W 200 Fully Customizable Channels GMRS Two-Way Radio. USB-C Charging, IP54 Weatherproof, Repeater Compatible, Dual Band Scanning (VHF/UHF), FM Radio, & NOAA Weather Broadcast Receiver

I have several other VHF radios but I needed a GMRS for a ride with our ATV group that uses rugged radios. This radio performs well and met my expectations right out of the box. It comes pre-programed with the usual GMRS frequencies.

I'm a 70 year old amateur radio operator who has been a public safety 2-way radio bench repair and installation technician most of my life, and though I've only had this radio for two days, I've already grown very fond of it. It's extremely well made, durable, easy to program and easy to use. For what I paid for it, I am well pleased. The over-all quality of this radio makes me wish I could have ONE of every single radio they make. Few things man made are truly perfect, but I really think this is a great radio in just about every area. I will get a better antenna for when I need to communicate when talking simplex or it's a real stretch to a repeater, and I will probably need to re-read the manual a few times, and as technology and radios evolve, I will eventually move on to what are going to be "newer and better toys," but for now, this radio is a keeper. Operators on the other end of simplex or the other side of the repeater tell me it sounds really good, and when I connect it to a good speaker mic or Bluetooth headset, it will be even better. Conclusion: For the price, a very decent handheld that I can use for GMRS and amateur comms...I give it a solid 3 and one half to a solid 4 out of 5 stars. If you need one that can do both modes and this is the most you can afford, you too could be very happy with this little radio for a very long time. Buy it!

When it comes to a handheld radio such as this, what matters most is the radio's ability to reliably transmit and receive with clarity and strength. On these accounts, I'm extremely pleased with this radio. I upgraded to this handheld from a popular, name brand blister pack of radios after being very disappointed with them and I'm absolutely blown away by how much better this GMRSv2 radio performs. Unlike the blister pack radios I replaced, this radio simply performs when conditions allow, and the voice on the other end is loud and clear. Since buying this, I've become more of a radio enthusiast and am now using local repeaters, building my own j-pole antennas, etc., and this radio has not only enabled the growing hobby, but has been a catalyst for my interest due to its features and capabilities. The transmit range is especially impressive in my opinion, even with the default antenna. I benefit from living at a relative high point in my area so this is a best case scenario, but the radio can reach a repeater as far as 41mi away (line of sight and perched atop a mountain peak) with light "scratch" and background noise when using the shipped antenna, and can hit the same repeater with near crystal clarity when connected to a GMRS tuned j-pole antenna that is elevated only about 8' in the air.While you can purchase this and use it without any real pre-existing experience with handheld radios, a hobbyist will probably be able to obtain more value from this radio than a first time user. The radio is extremely feature-rich and allows for good control over the featuers, their configuration, and overall tuning. To do so, though, be aware that the user manual will likely be necessary as the display character limit means the menu option names and values often need to be cross referenced against the manual. (Note: a printed manual is shipped with this radio, which I applaud - especially since you really need it!) Also note that programming the radio directly is a bit cumbersome, slightly non-intuitive, and you lose a few useful features, therefore I strongly suggest you buy the CHIRP compatible programming cable and program the radio using your computer if you plan to do even a modest amount of programming and want to extract value from every feature.OK, so if you've made it this far and are wondering to yourself, "why the four star rating when all the feedback thus far is largely positive?", well as so many people state in Amazon reviews: I'd really prefer if I could give this radio an overall 4.5 star rating, but since that's not possible, I must select 4 since the radio does have a few minor flaws (which get into below).Aside from the already mentioned limits on the user interface, my only major gripe with the radio is with its power management; most specifically with its battery indicator and capacity display. While I'm extremely pleased with the battery life overall (it'll stay powered on in a monitoring capacity for 2-3 8 hour days), in my opinion, Btech severely missed the mark with the battery indicator -- by the time the indicator shows that the battery has discharged by 1 bar, it has discharged enough that transmission strength starts reducing shortly thereafter and the remaining capacity appears to fall off rapidly leading to the unit powering off - I'll explain further in a bit. This is worked around by occasionally pressing and holding '0' to read the actual voltage (bravo, I love that this can be done), but it's a bit frustrating that the visual indicator's usefulness is pretty significantly reduced.While the safe/useful operating range of a single 3.7v nominal Li-ion cell is vaguely debatable, about ~3.2v-4.2v seems to be an accepted "standard" operational range. Since this radio uses a dual cell battery, I would reasonably expect to see the useful voltage range of the battery sit between ~6.4v-8.4v, though a range of ~6.2v-8.0v wouldn't shock me since for safety reasons, many manufacturers appear to cap the charge ceiling of a dual cell battery to 8.0v and then make up some of the capacity by pushing the floor a bit lower since it's technically within spec. In the case of this handheld, I've observed the following:- On average, the charger seems to bring the battery up to about 8.0v-8.2v- I've noticed that the radio unsurprisingly starts to lose a bit of strength (receive and especially transmit) around 6.5-6.4v- On average, the radio powers off/runs out of charge when the voltage drops below 6.1v- This means that Btech seems to have programmed the min and max thresholds to be ~6.0v (no power) and ~8.2v (max power/charge); as such, the radio is able to maintain power within a somewhat variable spread of 1.9v~2.1v range -- this is validated by the radios excellent actual battery life and is not inherently an issueThe issue arises as a function of when the battery indicator (which has 2 "bars"), finally shows the battery has discharged some: it effectively displays both bars (full) down through 7.0v. In other words, the visual indicator does not represent that the battery is depleted by 1 bar until the voltage drops to 6.9v. It then removes another bar at approximately 6.4v, and then finally blinks the icon with no bars to indicate the battery is alarmingly low around 6.2v. This may seem fairly reasonable until you understand that most batteries discharge in a non-linear manner with especially rapid fall off as you approach the lower threshold (this radio's battery being no exception). The result of this is that you can leave the radio on for about 8 hours a day for 2 days (receive only) and the battery indicator will display "full" charge for that whole time, then on the third day, the indicator will show 2 bars to start, then appear to drop rapidly over the next 2-4 hours with the unit somewhat suddenly turning off. This is not an unexpected behavior, but it means that someone may grab the radio from a shelf, check the indicator and see what appears to be a full, or nearly full battery, then set off on a full day's hike just to have it somewhat seemingly rapidly die and turn off before half the day is gone (ask me how I know this...) I feel that Btech is doing themselves a disservice by not accounting for the non-linear discharge properties of the battery.Once you know this quirk of the battery monitoring and visual indicator and leverage the voltage readout instead, it's not a big problem to work around, but I implore Btech to consider modifying their approach to this indicator algorithm.Overall, I highly recommend this radio if you're looking for one that provides quite a bit value for the cost and don't need a radio that has a high IP rating for water and dust resistance.

Great little 5 watt radio for licensed GMRS users. Nothing but good to say about it except seems a little pricey compared to the nearly identical ham radio HT it’s based off of (for half the price). But this V2 will work great for you and keep you legal which is important to some of us. 5-Stars.

As an owner of several BTECH radios, both Ham and GMRS, when it was time for a new radio and I saw this new release from BTECH, it was a no-brainer as to which radio I'd be buying. I've had this radio for a while now and it has performed flawlessly for me. Receive audio is great, and reports from others GMRS operators say my transmit audio is crisp and clear.The only 'drawback' to this radio is that even though it's advertised as a 5 watt radio, I've only been able to get 4.1 watts when tested on my power meter. However, I highly doubt that that "missing" watt is having any bearing on how far I'm transmitting as I can hit all of my local repeaters with ease, and I get a pretty good range when talking via simplex as well. 4.1 watts versus 5 watts is definitely not a reason for a less than 5 star rating for this radio.If you're looking for a quality GMRS HT, you cannot go wrong with the GMRS-V2 radio.

I got a pair of these shortly after getting some V1 units. I didn’t realize the V2 were so close to being released or I would have waited a bit longer. With that said, I do like the new features of the V2 very much.I don’t have a meter to test output, but others have done so to verify that it does appear to be outputting 5W or thereabouts.The improved feature set with the ability to program multiple memory spots on the same frequency is a much appreciated feature. You can set up multiple repeaters on the same frequencies with different codes and label them using the programming cable and computer to be very easy to understand and use.I am very happy with them so far even though I seem to not be able to transmit to my local repeater. To be fair, it’s about 25 miles away and not the most perfect line of sight. So far very nice and the new features will be very very useful. I think it’s worth upgrading if you have the V1 model.