BTECH UV-25X4 (Second Gen.) Mini Mobile 25 Watt Tri Band Base, Mobile Radio: VHF, 1.255M, UHF Amateur (Ham)

If you have a vehicle that you would like to install this in but don't have much space, this is seriously the radio for you. It is a very capable radio, yet very tiny. I can literally hold this thing in the palm of my hand. I drive an $800 car so I have no problem drilling into the dash and mounting this thing. There have been a lot of complaints in the reviews and I was skeptical about buying but decided to dive in anyway and I'm glad I did. This radio has held up well within the past month or so that I've used it, I've reached folks about 22 mi away using a larsen tri-band antenna. I'm seriously considering the 50x2 as a base station because this worked to well. As for the complaints... Is there an audible click? Yes. It is insanely loud and annoying? Annoying yes, loud no. I don't use 200mhz so I never have this issue. Is the fan loud? I actually laughed, it's really not that bad. It winds up while transmitting and sounds like a little rc car. While driving, this is not very noticeable and I just ignore it and enjoy my $100 radio. I also read that when using the radio powered via the cigarette lighter, it will heat up enough to melt. This did not happen in my case, however, I wired it up to my car battery for a more reliable connection. As for the programming side, do yourself a favor and download Chirp and use it. Makes this radio SO much easier to program, although you should know how to do this manually. Admittedly, this does take some time. My only complaint is the scanning. I have to enter the freq range I want to scan, rather than just select a band and hit scan. Minor complaint, but just what I prefer. I'd recommend this to anyone looking to jump in and not spend a whole lot of money.

SImple radio, easy to program with CHIRP. Set this up with a Tri-Band antenna for my RV and it works well. Power within a couple of watts of rating. Better with an external speaker, as the internal one is tinny sounding but radio sounds good with an external speaker.

I haven't had any of the problems that others have had with this radio, but I'm using it a bit differently. As I have another rig for 2M/70cm, the UV-25X4 is used exclusively for 1.25M with a monoband 5/8-wave whip. There aren't many options for 1.25M rigs beyond HTs, and I was happy to find the UV-25X4. It was mounted as shown in the attached pic. I bolted the rig mount into an aluminum plate, and slid the plate into a pocket behind the passenger seat, running the power cable to the cig lighter jack. This means that I can't see the display while driving, but I don't care. I can change channels using the mic, and I seldom need to adjust the volume. An external speaker was added using this CablesOnline 6in 3.5mm StereoTRRS 4-Pole Male to TS Microphone iPhone Adapter, Black (IP-MIC2K) handy adapter. No trouble at all. I used a simple inline ethernet cable (M to F) to extend the mic cable. Easy. Since my cig lighter jack is off when my car isn't running, the concerns over "parasitic current draw" never materialised. The programming cable arrived two weeks after the radio, so I had to program most of the repeaters manually. Seriously, it wasn't that hard. I'm baffled by people here that say they couldn't do it. I just followed the instructions. When the cable came, I used CHIRP to add a few other out-state repeaters and the rest of the simplex channels. There were no problems with performance. A few repeaters can't be reached in low spots while driving, but I doubt that more power would make a discernable difference. TX audio was reported as good, RX audio is nice. Since I am only using the radio for 1.25M, the issue of the relay clicks never showed up. While I haven't put it on a good watt-meter, no one I've been talking with has noticed the ten-second drop in TX power. Putting it on a cheap watt-meter didn't show any drop after 25 seconds. I dislike when reviewers attribute quality problems with *their* radio to *all* radios. I had NO issues with intermod, unlike using HTs for 1.25M. The filtering for 1.25M is very good, and I'm using a monoband whip. A tri-band whip is an intermod magnet. No problems picking up engine RFI, in spite of using the cig lighter jack. There are a lot of menu settings, but they are all "set and forget". In using this for two months, I've never had to change any setting. The radio has also been in my car for two months of Minnesota winter (cold!), and it hasn't affected the display or needed time to warm up. Don't know how it will handle the heat yet, but it's not very hard to take out, either. CONS: reverse burst (Menu 55) doesn't work, or doesn't work like the manual says it does. The radio also makes a brief sound like a pinball machine when you turn it on, and you can't turn that off. Adding the programming cable, TRRS adapter, and ethernet extension also added to the cost -- but not everyone needs those, either. As I said, there aren't many other options for 1.25M use -- and the non-HT options aren't nearly as easy to mount as the UV-25X4. I would absolutely recommend this to anyone looking for a decent 1.25M FM rig. EDIT: Put this on a Bird watt-metre, showed 17W and no drop in power after 30 seconds. Product description states 15W average power on 1.25M. Will update after 6 months, but as of 3 months there are no problems with daily use. NOTE: BTECH now offers a 50W amp BTECH AMP-220 Amplifier for 1.25M (220-225MHz), 30-50W Output (2-6W Input), Analog and Digital Modes, Compatible with all Handheld Radios: BTECH, BaoFeng, Kenwood, Yaesu, ICOM, Motorola for this radio. EDIT: I've now had this radio for a year without problems. I use it daily, and I've added a few 2m/70cm repeaters to the mix. Ignore the fear-mongering critics. EDIT: Nearly two years with this radio, in all weather extremes. It still functions great.

This little radio is a gem. I use a cheap power supply I bought off Amazon to power it up to 13.6 V dc. It's my base station although I built a converter from the AC power supply to a "cigarette lighter" supply to run it at home. I wanted a mobile ham radio but didn't want to have to run a cable from my battery into the passenger compartment (I'm not that committed!). Using the cheap Amazon power supply and a female cigarette lighter adapter I put in a little plastic tool box this guy is perfect for my needs. I can use it home and get a very nice signal and when I want to go mobile I just unplug it and my car can handle the 7A draw with no problem. Is this a real hard-core ham radio? No. Can it serve a great purpose in your car? Yes. Can you also use it at as a 20+ watt base station. Absolutely. I have been amazed at how good the transmit power and reception is. I will warn you the "cigarette lighter" gets warm and will need to be adjusted in your home power box. I plan on finding a power receptacle with wires and using those instead of the "cigarette lighter" to plug into my home power base. I can hit repeaters many miles away with this little gem, I also enjoy the 220 bands. There is not a lot of activity there but I plan on changing that and may even host my own 220 net. There's no reason we should give up bands just because the big 2 don't spend any money to make their radios compatible. Is it Chinese? Yes. Might it infringe on intellectual property of other radio companies? I don't know, that's above my pay grade. Can it be a nice base station and mobile station? Absolutely. The power draw is low enough that a car's "lighter" circuit should support it. Overall, I like the sound of this radio and love the low cost.