Review on 📻 BAOFENG UV-5X (UV-5G) GMRS Radio: Long Range, NOAA Alerts, Rechargeable, Chirp Support - 1 Pair by Douglas Davis

Received late March 2021. They worked instantly to communicate between devices. But you couldn't program them for repeaters and more complex scenarios. I had to buy a cable to update them and fix issues with the originally released version. That's an additional $18 and a few days. Please note that a PC is required for the update. I have a Mac and had to play around with PC virtualization to update devices. I couldn't find a menu that shows the version number of the firmware. After the update, the devices worked fine, but I found a few annoying issues: programming additional channels can be done from the devices themselves (but you can't change the channel name) or hack their XML. files. The programming software still has a lot of limitations and I haven't found a way to add a channel from there. You can only edit existing ones with their software. You can add a channel from the device itself and then edit the name with the software. Or you access the XML file, add your feeds and the same goes back to the devices. The XML file attributes are in Chinese but you can easily find the translation on Google. I kept their default 30 channels and added 4 local repeaters, each with a unique name. Now 34 GRMS channels work in the block. If you keep the standard NOAA and GMRS channels, you can program the additional channels 31 to 116 in the XML file. I programmed 4 of them. Is working. The earpiece doesn't work for me. Every time the squelch opens it makes a very loud noise. I don't know if it's the radio or the speakers. The standard antenna is not very good. I have another model that can receive transmissions much better. In fact, the uv-5x will not receive any transmission when the other model is on the GMRS frequency! The antenna can be removed with a small Allen key. With the NA-771 type antenna, reception is much better.