<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>GarbageBandito asked:<br><br>"The tiny Motorola hand held walkie talkies seem very affordable... Is anyone aware of a review of the models out there, or have an opinion on features to look for."<p><hr></blockquote><p>I know of no reviews. Sorry. Opinions I have aplenty, though. ;-p<br><br>For a number of years, I managed three separate but interoperating staffs of Security Officers at a site which grew during my time there from 5 buildings housing 1,000 employees and contracotors to 17 buildings housing 2,500. Part of our duties involved interfacing with three Emergency Response Teams; Fire, Medical and HazMat. The total number of personnel who used radios as a regular part of their job grew during this period from 4 to perhaps, oh, I'd say 200, give or take a few dozen. At one time or another during this period, I or people I directly interacted with likely used just about every commercial or industrial brand of hand held "walkie talkie" style radio then available, including some that operated on multiple channels, scanned and/or relayed through repeaters. Certain of us also had telephone interface functions via integrated keypads on our radios. I've had many phone conversations on radios over the years, and called 911 more than a few times from them.<br><br>(Reading back over this thread:<br>I can only remember one ICOM radio among the throng. I didn't like it, but my single instance isn't much of a sample. Also, we were not using HAM freqencies, and I have no personal experience with them. The hams I have known have all loved it, though.)<br><br>Since the quality and reliability of our radio communications were obviously important to me, I grew to have strong feelings about brands, but, interestingly, not particularly about models. The variation from model to model was, in my experience, just about exactly as advertised, provided the brand was a good one. The variation from model to model among poorer brands was an extremely random thing, usually complicated by the general poor performance regardless of models. IOW, a good brand had reliably good models, which just about always did what they were advertised to do. Poorer brands were a crapshoot anyway, so it was hard to tell how much performance variation was assignable to specific models.<br><br>Which brand was good? Motorola. After a while, I simply wouldn't accept anything else for my department. I became a serious Motorola bigot, and argued budget over it with my boss more than once. BUT, my people's radios always worked, and well. (Of course, I had to make sure they were trained well enough to work the equipment... o_O ...but, that would be the case with any brand.) I found them sturdier than other brands, clearer in sound quality and usually better at distance.<br><br>(Again, reading back over this thread:<br>rastr, I'm curious. in what ways have you found Motorolas to be vulnerable? Water? Impact? Temperature? Something else?)<br><br>For myself, nowadays, I own two Motorola "Talkabout" T6320 handhelds (the green trimmed ones). The only real complaint I have about them is that the battery cover is held in place in, well, a "less than solid" manner. The covers are anything but waterproof, and I have to be careful with the radios when pulling them out of the battery charger. In addition to the FRS channels and normal alert features and customizable settings, they also have a bunch of other functions, including compass, temperature, barometer, altimeter, clock, stopwatch, and eight weather channels. They could easily have other features, too. I wouldn't know, because I have not taken the time nor invested the energy to find out.<br><br>Which of these features would I recommend you look for? Er,... I don't know... I rarely use them. I consider things like the stopwatch to be useless for my purposes, things like the compass as a possible (since it's a complex electronic device) backup to my normal compass and things like the weather channels a real nice feature to have. But that's because of the fact that the main times I use them are when I'm offroading in my Jeep or hiking with my girlfriend. If my normal activities regularly included being involved in atheletic competitions of some kind, I might end up considering the stopwatch a real nice backup in case my "real" stopwatch got misplaced or damaged. I don't know. I'd recommend that you just figure out what you're likely to use the radio for and how much money you want to spend and base your decisions on those criteria. If you just want a radio, then forget about getting one with fancy features and use the money you save elsewhere.<br><br>In my bigoted opinion, if you get a Motorola, you'll know you're getting a good radio, and that's what counts.