Is there an up-to-date table comparing the Chinese hand sets on the market?

[SoapeyStephens]

I recently decided to renew my ham radio license and re-join the party. My old handset disappeared in one of the moves I made over the years. I've gone cross eyed looking at reviews of Chinese radios and trying to keep up with which ones have been superseded or outdistanced by a competitor. Does someone keep a table showing latest versions and showing features?

It is interesting to know power, bands, GPS or not, etc. against price and other trade offs.

[ch25]

Most of them are direct sampling crap RX circuit.
Want good performance get real dual conversion superhet radio.
Chris

[Transwarp]

@SoapeyStephens
Depends what you want and what you're prepared (or not as the case might be) to spend on some kit. The cheap stuff does what it says on the tin but is just that - cheap, well cheap for ham radio gear anyway. The better quality and made gear is if you're serious about or simply that you're just loaded.

[paulears]

I dont think there is one, and the essential information is rarely even in the specs. So many now have identical technical specs, and a table would show 3000 vs 3200 memories, or mAH differences in the battery, but not tell you the power consumption. The comment about the receiver design is a good one,but often the specs would tell you sensitivity, but selectivity and giving IF frequencies are often missed out. Realistically, choice for many people is now down to youtube. Watching videos and assessing the reviewer, not the product. I sell radios, of all brands if they fit my customers, and not once in recent years have specs been useful. I order a new product and on opening the box and taking it out, ai sort of instantly know. Great surprises when a cheaper one feels right and grewt dissapointment when the replacement for a good seller is horrible. Suppliers come and go. The one I had at top of my list gets no orders now as the current product, with better spec, is a worse radio. One brand is top in marine band but less popular in the ham products.

The key thing for every buyer is matching features and benefits. If you live in a rural area selectivity may not be an issue, but sensitivity probably is, so the cheaper radios with non superhet designs can work really well, even on an external antenna.


Watch the reviews and filter them. Maybe the reviewer has very limited technical skills, but mentions something you too would like/hate, or the very technical reviewer who is scathing about a feature does not realise you actually would never use what he hates?

Often with hand helds, the test is what it feels like. Solid, heavy, big buttons vs tiny, light, multiple features and functions.

Is it a nice radio? Specs will just totally obliterate the selection process, and, of course, production life of many radios is less than a year before something changes.

[Agent 48]

Most of them have crappy receivers and are only really suitable for very local stuff, private walkie talkie etc. The receivers don't cope well when taking up hill tops and stuff and they also pick up stuff that isn't there.

The transmit side of things, normally on the dual banders or quad banders you'd get 5 or 7 watts on VHF 2 meters and 1.7 watts or less on UHF 70cms/446 or it can be the other way around where you'd get full power on one band but much less on other bands. Also if your putting these in your pocket with keys or metal objects, watch the charging terminals on the back of the battery because they will short and heat up if metal comes into contact while in your pocket or in a bag.

[dc260]

Most of them are direct sampling crap RX circuit.
Want good performance get real dual conversion superhet radio.
Chris

I can't state this enough, they all use the same RDA/belken "chip on a radio", even seen certain budget Yaesu radios use it (ft-4x & ft-65).

RF performance will be almost identical across all these sets and suffer from awful overload if you are close to RF transmissions when you plug it into an external antenna.

[PaulBritInHolland]

I recently compared the performance of two HTs whilst on Box Hill. Only 2 QSOs on 2m FM Simplex. Using a Baofeng UGV-25 (10w) and a Yaesu FT-65 (5W).

One station (some 56kms away) could only hear little bits of my QSO - he heard more of my QSO from the Baofeng than the Yaesu. The reception was much clearer on the Yaesu than on the Baofeng (with the latter there was more hiss in the audio).

The other station (some 43kms away) could copy my QSO well, with a S7 from both sets, although the audio was "punchier" from the Baofeng. The quality of the received signal was the same for both sets for this station.

I may try and put a video of these QSOs up on YouTube soon.

[dc260]

I recently compared the performance of two HTs whilst on Box Hill. Only 2 QSOs on 2m FM Simplex. Using a Baofeng UGV-25 (10w) and a Yaesu FT-65 (5W).

One station (some 56kms away) could only hear little bits of my QSO - he heard more of my QSO from the Baofeng than the Yaesu. The reception was much clearer on the Yaesu than on the Baofeng (with the latter there was more hiss in the audio).

The other station (some 43kms away) could copy my QSO well, with a S7 from both sets, although the audio was "punchier" from the Baofeng. The quality of the received signal was the same for both sets for this station.

I may try and put a video of these QSOs up on YouTube soon.

Just keep in mind, the FT-65 internally is surprisingly similar to a Baofeng compared to other Yaesu models, the FT-65 & FT4X both use the RDA chip which is the same as the Baofeng, the difference is in the filtering & microphone quality. Since the Yaesu has better filtering it might be better at rejecting out of band signals which you would encounter whilst being on a hill.

https://qrpblog.com/2018/09/yaesu-ft-4x ... a-baofeng/

[PaulBritInHolland]

The thing is - I manged to make a QSO with someone from top of a hill using a cheap chinese HT - I didn't use the antenna supplied with the HTs - i used a Nagoya NA-771.

I agree with Agent 48's comment about the output power of the cheap chinese HTs - I have a few and the output power on 2m does vary between 5 and 7 watts (with the exception of the 10W rated Baofeng UV-25 which has an output of just under 10W on 2m). But if you view my video, you will see that there is not a great deal of difference between a 5w and a 10W output on 2m.

Here is the URl of the video I made comapring the two HTs (for some reason it starts from 12 seconds in):