Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

THIS ISN'T A WALKIE TALKIE. this is a basic handheld HAM radio. as in, designed for use on VHF and UHF frequencies. if you've just passed your tech license exam, this is a great place to start. you can program it with the keypad and save freqs in place. you can also use CHIRP to program it IF you get a cable to do it, and have a PC to do it. my chromebook won't support CHIRP, so i have to program it manually. but it's a great place to start. good quality for the price. and you can do basic upgrades to it too, when you're ready or interested. once you're ready to upgrade your ham radio experience, you can keep these as perfect emergency/backup/ht units. when i'm ready, these will become the backup emergency units to keep in our cars, with repeaters and freqs programmed in. but as i'm a noob to HAM and a tech license, they're a great place to start. and once i've gotten my use out of them and learned what i want, i'll upgrade to a nice unit. probably still a hand unit. or i could upgrade these with bigger batteries and antennas. anyway, don't get confused by bad reviews. these are likely from people who just wanted walkie talkies, and instead got much more powerful and useful HAM radios, which they're not licensed to use. but even if you're not licensed, ANYONE can use these to transmit in case of emergency. and anyone can use them to receive and scan or hear emergency broadcasts, etc. anyone can listen to a ham radio, but to broadcast, you gotta have a license.