I have several Radioddity GM-30's.

Good: Cheap, easy to program (via Windows computers only!), has enough features to be useful but not so many you can't hand it to someone and give them a "how-to-use" lesson in under 2 minutes. Powerful enough for most local uses, and has repeater capability. Can be set up to listen-only mode on lots of additional frequencies (I use one to monitor our dispatch channel for fire - 155.55).

Bad: Not waterproof (this turned out to be more of a problem than I expected). Front-end is easily overloaded by other radios transmitting nearby. One of them seems to have suffered an excessive amount of damage from what I'd consider a minor drop. Antenna connection is - like all screw-on SMA style antennas - just too fragile.

I also have several Motorola portables that were in service as radios for a fire company. The county radio system changed frequency bands from 500mhz to 700mhz, so they were decommissioned. I had them reprogrammed to GMRS channels (yes, that's legal, no I can't tell you who to go to).

These radios are incredibly durable, as they are used by firefighters in all kinds of conditions. However, they are not as easy to use as you'd expect.

For me, the perfect GMRS radio is not out there.
I want:

- Waterproof - for real. Drop it in a pond and get annoyed, nothing else, as you fish it out and wipe the mud off.

- No "modal" interfaces. I want a radio with buttons and dials that each do one thing and one thing only.
I want a dial with 20 channels that I can program, and leave it at that.
I loved my oldHT 750radios we used to use on-scene because of the simplicity of the physical design - I could operate it entirely by touch.
- An Antenna connection that is robust enough to withstand a drop directly on an attached antenna from 6'.