Decent radio! Receive is good! I can hit several local repeaters. Good tribander for the price!

Incredible value for a Tri-Band Radio.Buy a large battery that comes with the car charger, buy the triband antenna, and buy the usb communication cable.Optionally, take the Technician course for $15, answer most of 35 questions and you can literally talk to the world on a good day.This unit has an FM radio, flashlight and siren built in, plus the programmable channels.I programmed channels to have weather band, local EMT, local Fire, Marine Radio channels 1-20, the Walkie Talkie channels, and downloaded local transmitter stations for Govt and Ham Radio stations near me. It is easier than you would expect. I had no knowledge of how to use this thing and no radio experience when I bought this radio. But if you buy the usb communication cable and the triband antenna, with a little help from youtube, you can download a program called chirp and program your radio to do it all on a rainy afternoon.As a followup, I broke the belt clip 8 months after the original review. I contacted BTECH via their customer email and they sent me a belt clip at not charge within 3 business days. EXCELLENT CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!

I added a triband antenna so I would not have to change antennas. I works great, thanks.

As a beginner in Amateur (HAM) radio, this radio was recommended by the Instructor. So far, and I'm just beginning, it has been easy to program (with the Programming Cable) and I'm looking forward to getting into all 3 bands.

It's a decent radio. Checked output with watt meter, over 4.5 watts just under 5. Been using it about 2 weeks and have hit repeaters about 26 plus miles away. 220 band is quite around here but picking up repeaters over 20 miles away. Great beginner or entry level radio to start with. Chirp is the way to go, programming is a breeze. Added bl-5l battery and triband antenna, nice additions. I'm taking antenna to work to test swr, I will update review.update: sent antenna back, I tested antenna with antenna analyzer at 146MHz the SWR was 3.56, at 220Mhz the SWR was 5.12. Surprisingly the factory supplied antennas with this radio measured 1.48 at 146MHz and 1.49 at 220MHz. I did not test at 70CM band. For a sub $60 tri band handheld I'm extremely pleased with it. The BL-5L 3800mAH battery is a great extended use addition.

Comes with 2 antennae which must be switched if you want the single band. Should include Triband since it's a Triband radio. Would have been much easier to program with non included pc kit. I still give it 4 stars because it is still a good radio even though it's sold without needed antennae or programming kit.

Kind of a pain to program, but after figuring it out it's ok. Bought the tri band antenna with it so I can't say swapping antennas sucks but I'm sure it would be. The only issue I've seen is the antenna nut keeps loosening up. It takes a special tool ( I don't have ) to tighten it back up

Works great with a quality manual (finally). Extensive programming options, inexpensive accessories. We'll see how long it lasts but for the price, you can't beat it!

Bought this after owning a UV-5R V2+ for about a year and really, really enjoying it. Although the 220MHz option is great to have, it was the linked display for channel mode ( seeing your channel name + frequency at the same time ), range scanning, and reportedly better intermod rejection that drew me to this model.So far, this has been a great radio for the price, just like the UV-5R V2+. I do, however, miss the nicer looking design of the former, as this is the old original UV-5R shell. I don't hold that against it though, as that is a petty cosmetic preference. One thing that I do notice ( and this could just be a one-off with my unit, too ) is that my older UV-5R V2+ had a warmer sound to it. From the UV-5x3 I am using, I can hear the higher background static, along with treble in general, as sharper and more pronounced. It is still within what I would consider acceptable levels, but it's just barely so. As these are DSP-based radios, it's too bad they don't have some sort of EQ functionality, but now I am just being picky again.Remote stun and kill features are DISABLED by default. The latest version of CHIRP at this time considers support for the UV-5x3 to be in beta and throws up a warning, but everything worked just fine.Firmware version is UVV306.All in all, I really like this radio and am happy with it.UPDATE: After two weeks of heavy use, my particular unit does not show any buggy behavior symptoms mentioned in some other reviews. This is not meant by any means to invalidate their own reviews, but rather to document my own experience. I will update this review if any odd behavior pops up. So far, so good.UPDATE #2: I have noticed that my 5x3 is much less sensitive to weak FM broadcast stations when compared to both of my 5R models. Where the 5R will pick up the station ( and find it on scan ) with slight static, the 5x3 I have scans right past it, and when manually tuned, will only pick it up ( with more static than the 5R ) when the antenna is coupled to a nearby piece of metal or my hand. I have swapped antennas between the radios and verified that the antenna was absolutely not the problem. This is NOT an issue when picking up VHF or UHF frequencies outside of broadcast FM mode. It still works great in every other way, and blowtorch FM stations work just fine. Just seemed worth mentioning. Still loving the 5x3.

I use it on all three bands. Best radio I have used so far and love the display sync feature.