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.

I have owned this transceiver for 8 months and it has already failed. I primarily use it for listening as I am not a licensed Ham operator. However, I have lightly used it to transmit on GMRS. When I say lightly I mean maybe two hours of transmitting in total. I have other radios I prefer when talking on GMRS so this radio as mentioned has very little talk time. Prior to failure my SWR was 1.01. Last night while trying to reach a party on GMRS, the radio could not be heard. At first I thought maybe I had the CTCSS codes wrong, however they were not. Today I took the time to investigate and found the radio is transmitting ZERO watts. There is absolutely no signal being transmitted from the radio. After doing further research online, turns out the final driver in this unit is prone to failure. Although the manufactures advertises the unit as 25 watts, the final output is only rated at 15 watts. So the problem seems to stem from over driving the final. I reached out to Btech and waiting on a response. I will update on Btech customer service short.y.

This radio works great for the money. I purchased it to use inside my home for talking on local FM repeaters. I already own a couple of Baofeng/BTECH HTs, so I'm already familiar with the brand. I wanted more than 5 watts that you get with a HT, but I didn't need 50+ watts. This radio fits my requirements nicely at less than half the price of a Japanese radio from Icom, Yaesu, or Kenwood. Out of the box, the radio comes with the actual transceiver, a handset, and a DC power cable with a cigarette lighter adapter on the end, along with a mounting bracket and spare fuse. I immediately cut the cigarette lighter adapter off and replace it with crimped-on rings to match my power supply. I don't plan on ever using this radio in my vehicle, and if I do, I will directly wire it into the vehicle's electrical system. Cosmetically, this radio isn't perfect. There are some minor things that could be better. Other people have commented about the cheesy serif font. Also I noticed that if you do a factory reset, it asks you "SOURE?" I think that is supposed to be "SURE?" However, the important thing is that it was easy to configure, and it transmits and receives well. Sending and receiving sounds great, and other people have said that my transmissions are clear as a bell. That is what's most important to me, and for the price I paid, I can tolerate some quirks like the "SOURE?" prompt. I especially like the fact that you can sync the channels so you can see both the frequency and name of the channel you're using, and of course I like the fact that it supports programming via Chirp.

I am really impressed with the Gen2 BTech UV-25x4. It's a little bitty radio, but provides a great deal performance and functionality! I purchased it as it supports 1.25m as well as the usual 2m and 70cm bands (MAKE 220 GREAT AGAIN .. before they auction off the frequencies !!!) I was surprised with excellent audio and overall performance. Other stations report good audio and good signal. the mic adapter allows me to use either my headset or hand mike as conditions require. Controls are straight forward and intuitive. Outstanding truck radio ..

My morbid curiosity lead me to purchase this radio, as a fan of Baofeng's line of dirt cheap and decent quality HT's, I thought this might be a product worth having around. The radio is small, about the size of three slices of bread stacked on top of each other. It's incredibly lightweight and portable. The microphone is a near perfect clone of the Kenwood mic used in the D700/D710 radios which is a huge plus for those that like a rugged large mic. The screen is very bright and the readout is easy to read, I just wish it had more display options and used a better font other than that cheasy looking serif font. The menu is cumbersome to use and programming a channel is best compared to programming a VCR. Alternatively, you can purchase the programming cable (for around $20) and use Chirp to program it. The RX detection and PTT has significant delays for some reason, you may miss the first part of a word when receiving and when transmitting there's a delay of about half a second before the radio's finals are outputting. Sticking it on the bench, I immediately noticed some issues. While transmitting into a dummy load on 2 meters, after about 10-15 seconds the radio's output power begins to drop, my assumption being thermal limiting within the radio. This continues to drop until the radio is barely drawing 1.5A from the power supply down from nearly 4A! Another thing I noticed is how the fan speed significantly reduces when transmitting. The fan speed seems like it's dropping to about half the speed from when the radio is transmitting and restores itself to full speed when the radio is receiving. I'm wondering how many others have experienced this or if there's a chance that my radio has some defective traces or solder joints inside leading to a significant voltage drop to the fan. In conclusion, I still think this radio could use some additional R&D from BTECH. There is no reason why a radio that only outputs 20-25W should be thermal limiting itself after only 10 sseconds of transmitting. The firmware should be updated to include an easier to navigate menu with built in help and a much easier way of field programming channels. The main display needs some additional display options with the ability to turn off the other on screen channels if you're not using them. And please please get rid of that terrible serif font and go with a modern sans serif font! Rating this a 3/5 stars. The radio does work as advertised, but the reduction in output power while transmitting for 10-15 seconds is not acceptable.