Arcshell Rechargeable Long Range Two-Way Radios with Earpiece 5 Pack Arcshell AR-5 Walkie Talkies Li-ion Battery and Charger Included (5 Pack)

For my purposes, these radios are exactly what I needed, which is why I gave them 5 stars. However, if you want a radio you can pull out of the box and start using, this is not what you're looking for. Yes, you can do that, but you will be in violation of FCC regulations. More importantly, you may interfere with public service or business radios. These radios are intended for use by businesses which have a comm person who knows how to program them. They come from the factory with frequencies programmed in (apparently it's not good to leave radios unprogrammed) but unless you know how to program them, you won't even know what those frequencies are nor what the power setting is. They can be programmed to either 2 watts or 0.5 watts and yours may be set to low power, which is probably why some people get poor performance at longer distances. Most of the programmed frequencies are in the "business band" which is a license-only band by FCC regulation. If you interfere with a business which paid to use that frequency, they will probably report you. If you interfere with police, fire, ambulance, etc. operations, they will definitely report you. Some of the channels have "privacy codes" which ignore anything that doesn't have the same code. That's why they won't interface with radios you already own. They can be made to do that, but they won't do it out of the box.If you want to pull something out of the box and immediately use it, you really are looking for an FRS radio. Amazon has a bunch of them. They have 22 license-free channels and operate at 2 watts except channels 8-14 which are 0.5 watts. Just type "FRS radio" into the search bar. They are more expensive, but they won't give you a headache because they don't do what you want, and they won't get you a hefty fine from the FCC. The probability of being caught is very low, but it's not zero.If you're knowledgeable or just brave, you can reprogram the radio yourself, but you will need a Baofeng programming cable (also available on Amazon) and a free downloadable program called CHIRP. You also have to know which frequencies you want to program in. As I said, not for beginners. If you're hell-bent to do it, I recommend you keep to the license-free FRS frequencies so you don't attract unwanted attention. You can look them up online. There are many excellent videos about how to do this on YouTube and if you're even a little tech-savvy, you can probably learn to do it.Again, if you're looking for an out-of-the-box solution, this isn't it. However, they're excellent little radios if you know how to program them.

We recently installed a repeater for the neighborhood to use. I bought these to give each household two. Took me 20 minutes to program all 10 radios. Got download from Chirp. Great little radios, easy to use, fast shipping. Better than description.

I just got these two days ago and couldn’t believe how well they worked, I went 3 blocks away and they worked perfect even with all the houses and buildings that were in between my house and where I was at.

We are a non-profit organization that received a donation, which included an older set of the Arcshell AR-5 walkie-talkies. We had a large event, so we purchased an even larger set of additional Walkie-talkies (same manufacturer and same model AR-5) to ensure they were compatible. We didn't receive them just before the event, but we felt comfortable with our order because of your advertised, 24/7 customer service guarantee on your website. Unfortunately for our 130 volunteers, the old Arcshell AR-5 Walkie-talkies and the new Arcshell AR-5 Walkie-talkies were not compatible. In addition, the 24/7 customer service number [(356) 924-3576] didn't work and our email to Arcshell’s customer service came back as “undeliverable.”We are very disappointed.

These work great for what I bought them for, I bought them for my team at a retail store. The ear piece is not the best but the walkies them self are great