E1652: Best Handheld Ham Radios You Can Buy in 2025!

My Top 11 HT picks for the Best Handheld Ham Radios for 2025.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Best handheld HAM Radio, Best HT handheld transceiver for twenty
twenty five. Coming into the shopping season of twenty twenty five,
take a look at these top eleven radios that I
have picked out my personal preference of what is the
best HT for this year coming into shopping season and
moving into next year, let's go. These best HT and

(00:26):
best mobile videos do very well in the channel and
I appreciate you guys providing all the feedback that you
have on these in the past. I'm gonna go through
the top eleven handheld HAM radios for twenty twenty five
today in this video, and if I miss something or
if you think I should add something, please put a
comment in the video below. First off, we're gonna start
out and all of these are gonna go in order

(00:47):
of price. We're gonna start with the lowest price. We're
gonna go to the top price the most expensive. So
today we're gonna start with this brand new Bawfang UV
five R Mini. Now, I've read some good reports about
this radio and I'm actually they got one of them
right here and I let the battery die on it.
I've used this on my All Star Hub a couple
of times it's I've gotten good sound reports from it.

(01:09):
It is very small. This is my smartphone right here,
so you can see how small it is. There's several
videos from other YouTubers on YouTube as well, and this
is getting really high marks right now. So today we're
starting out with the Balfang UV five R Mini and
it is selling on Amazon. This is a two pack
on Amazon for forty five ninety nine free delivery in

(01:31):
about a week or so, so that's about what twenty
two to fifty twenty twenty, yeah, twenty two to fifty
apiece something like that. You can get them in various
colors black, gray, green, orange. There's actually a clear one
that's out there as well, and I think the clear
one costs a little bit more money. That's usually the
way of things, the kind of the more unique colors

(01:53):
tend to cost a little bit more money. This one
does advertise Bluetooth read write frequency five watt power, nine
hundred ninety nine memory channels. Nine or ninety nine memory
channels is a good number of memory channels for a
bwfang radio. A lot of your early Bowfangs, including the
UV five R and UV eighty two, only had about
one hundred and twenty eight memory channels, so this one
is smaller than most and has nine hundred and ninety

(02:13):
nine memory channels, has Noah Weather Warning, USBC for fast Charging,
Emergency Outdoor Hunting Equipmentgency Outdoor Emergency and Hunting Equipment set.
So sure, yeah, that's that's probably fine. Actually, I probably
will take mine hunting this year now that I think
about it. So number one today is the Balfang UV
five R Mini twenty two and a half dollars apiece

(02:36):
forty five ninety nine for two pack on Amazon. Next
is it's big brother, the DM thirty two UV DMR Radio. Now,
I did a video about a radio similar to this
a while back. It was not stamped Bowfang, but it's
probably the same radio inside. And when we were out
in Huntsville, Alabama, earlier this year, and I was sitting

(02:57):
down to record the general class sessions from one of
their instructors in that at the facility there those classes
you will see on this channel upcoming very soon, he
had one of these and he couldn't stop talking about
how great it was. He's like, look, Balfangs are very
hit or miss. I like some of them. I don't
like other ones, he said. He put this one on
a spectrum analyzer on a tiny SA he got really

(03:20):
good results. He's used it for DMR and analog. He
really likes the way it sounds, he likes the way performs.
So I'm like, okay, well, I got to pick one
of these up. So I've ordered one of these. I
haven't done anything with it yet. I'm waiting on it
to get here. I ran across it again making the
list for this video, and I'm like, you know what,
I need to just bite the bullet and grab one
of those and do a separate video on that. But

(03:40):
this comes in about sixty nine to ninety nine fifteen
percent off at the time of this recording. And it
is a much larger much larger than the UV five
R Mini and even the UV five R. It's got
the large screen on it, and it is a DMR radio,
not just analog USBC Type C pro gramming ten watts
APRS dual band. So I'm wondering what APRS means. Does

(04:01):
it just perceive are does it have full APRS functionality
or is that did they just put APRS in the
title because it's a catchy term. And it doesn't actually
have APRS. It just as GMR GPS. So I don't know.
I'm gonna grab one and see, but this one comes
in number two today at seventy dollars for one of
the radios. The next is the bwfang Tech, the b

(04:22):
Tech BFF eight hp Pro ten watt triband radio, which
includes two twenty IP fifty four rated one thousand channels,
GPS aviation receive and USBC. I have a ten percent
off coupon that balfang Tech give gave me to share
with my subscribers. You can get ten percent off with
the coupon code of HR two dash bf F eight

(04:43):
hp Pro. Actually it might be bf HR two dash
F eight hp Pro. I'll have to look it up.
I forget whether the whole thing's in there because it's
kind of a long model number. But you can get
ten percent off regardless of that, which is about seven bucks.
So that drops us one down to about sixty two
dollars at the time of this recording. Again, it is
tryband one thousand memory channels, very rugged. I've got one

(05:05):
of these around here somewhere, and I played with it
a little bit. I'm like you know what, this is
a very well made, sturdy feeling Ham radio and it
works really well on the two twenty band as well.
So if you're looking at tryband something, this is going
to be the lowest priced tryband radio that we talk
about today. Number four is a Japanese made radio. Now,
all of these radios we've talked about so far are

(05:26):
Chinese made Balfang Both of those are Bowfang's Balfang Tech,
and Balfang Tech is a company inside the USA. They're
in North or South Dakota. South Dakota. I think they
do all the design and all the sales and all
the implementation, but the radios are still made in China.
They work with Balfang to do some updated models and
improvements and they are all type accepted, FCC certified and

(05:49):
all that kind of good stuff. So if you want
to buy a lesser expensive radio that's similar to a
Balfang but don't want to have to call China for support,
Balfang Tech has inside of the USA support, but they
are Chinese radios. Number four on the list today is
the Yazu FT sixty five. This is a five watt
VHF dual band HT you're gonna get Yazu performance with it.

(06:10):
Some of these older models would actually say made in
China on the package. I've been told that Jesu has
moved all over their manufacturing back to Japan, so you
might or might not get a FT sixty five that
says made in Japan or made in China on it.
The one I have says made in China, but it
was I purchased it four or five years ago, so
I've had it for a while. Again, I've been told
that they have moved that back to Japan since then,

(06:33):
so I don't know what the current status of things is.
Five what three power settings five wat, two point five
and zero point five watts, a twenty five hundred million
amp hour lithium ion battery for over eleven and a
half hours of operating time. VAFO scan, memory scan, party
channel scan, weather scan alert weather channels and severe weather alerts.

(06:54):
Full list, design of features and specifications right here on
the gigabarts website. Also remember it's not to get you
a discount, but if you use the code of KC
five HWB at the gigaparts website, you will get double
points on all purchases. For everything you purchase from them,
and then you can kind of accumulate points and let
them build up in your account, and the next time
they run a double or triple or ten x points

(07:17):
special on purchases in the story, you can take all
your points in kind of ten x them at that
point in time, So just wait for that. But it's
a point system they came up with that's really kind
of cool once you understand how it works. But this
is number four on the list today for number five
are going back to a b Tech. This is the
b Tech UV Pro five wy GPS Bluetooth app programmable

(07:39):
and this has probably been one of the most popular
radios of this year or twenty twenty five. A lot
of us got together and use this radio in Orlando
and again in Dayton and again in Huntsville this year.
I've done several videos talking about this radio. I've been
carrying this specific model with me for the last two

(07:59):
to three months because it has a full kiss tnc
accessible by Bluetooth in it, so a so without getting
too much and I've already explained this in previous videos,
but basically what it means is you can use Bluetooth
from your Android device or your iOS device, connect to
the radio and use it as a tnc to connect
into APRS or wind link. Okay, and I have specific

(08:21):
videos about doing all that, and for this price point
for one hundred and sixty five dollars a radio that
has all of those features. We only have one other
radio we're going to talk about today that has all
of those features, and it's much more than one hundred
and sixty five dollars, So stay tuned. I'm going to
talk about that one shortly because it's one of my
favorite radios in the list today. But I also have
a ten percent coupon off of this radio HR two

(08:41):
dash UV pro and I know that that coupon code
is right. Sold a lot of radios for BTech with
that coupon code, So you can get a sixteen fifty
discount ten percent off of this radio. Full Bluetooth T
and C comes in a ten model as well. Useful
for connecting to win Link, packet over FM or useful
for APRS beginning on one three nine excellent excellent radio,

(09:03):
very good quality. The internal menus for APRS leave a
little bit to be desired. They don't they're not quite
one hundred percent there yet. However, if you just use
the TNC in it to connect it to APR as droid,
you're golden. It works great. So that's number five on
today's list. Number six, we're gonna go back to. We're
sticking with the Chinese made but American designed radios. Anything

(09:26):
for Better Safe Radio dot Com is eligible for a
seven percent off coupon. Code HR two to all seven
will get you seven percent off of anything pretty much
all of the radios for sure on this website. So
he's got this new yellow model that just came in.
He's running a fall special right now at the time
of this recording, and I'm sure he'll probably have a

(09:47):
Black Friday special that comes up soon. But regardless of
what that is, you can always use HR two all
seven to get a seven percent discount on all radios
on this website. The great thing about this is the
only radio in today's list with the following feature. Okay,
this radio, all of his walks on radios, Oh Shang radios,

(10:09):
they all come pre programmed. Nine hundred plus memory channels
come in all of these radios. He's got a code
plug that he puts in all of these radios, most
of them are receive only. All of the HAM radios
are opened up on the HAM versions, and all of
the GMRS frequencies are opened up on the GMRS versions.
Of these, of course the rest of them receive only.
But you've got police and fire department, you've got Businessman,

(10:31):
you got ems, you got no weather, you've got a
bunch of other weather stations. You've got channels that you
probably never even knew existed, military and whatnot. Over nine
hundred channels come pre programmed, and all of the radios
that are purchased from this website. So I often get
the question about, hey, if you just got your license
and you're just starting out and you don't really know
what you're doing, which radio would you get? And I'm like,

(10:53):
go get a better Safe radio because it's going to
have all of these channels pre programmed for you. You're
gonna be able to put it on scan and kind
of see what available activity there is in your area.
So check out Better Safe Radio. Links to this website
and everything else we talk about will be in the description.
Blow if you're talking about wanting to feed any of
these are all HT radios we're talking about today. But

(11:13):
if you ever want to feed them into an external
antenna and get a little bit better range out of them.
I highly recommend Mezzi and Poloni coacs. Mezi and Ploony
Coax is the sponsor of today's video. You can save
a ten percent discount with the coupon code of HR
two cables at the link in the description BLOW. Italian
made coacts, very good quality, some really cool coax tools,

(11:34):
some of the best ends PL two fifty nine and
type in connectors that you will see in the industry.
Great quality co acts made out of Italy and they've
been a sponsor of this channel for a while, so
I highly recommend them. Check the links in the description BLOW.
Thank you Mezzi and Ploony for supporting the channel. Sticking
with the Chinese made radios, this is number seven and

(11:55):
this is a fairly new radio that just came out
earlier this year, the Redivius Alliance A one DMR radio.
This is a new version of what used to be
their HD one I think or something HA one no
HD one. I think. They sent me one of these
and they're like, hey, can you make a video about this?
And I said sure, and I got it and I
tinkered with it for a few days, maybe a week,

(12:16):
something like that, and then they emailed me again and
they're like, hey, don't make that video yet. We're out
of stock. They've all sold out, and they claim that
the reason they all sold out is because of the
fantastic APRS features on this radio. Now, I've tinkered with
this a little bit and I will be making a
video about it soon. I don't have that up yet
because I was waiting on them and they've given the
go ahead. They're back in stock now, but they claim

(12:37):
that this radio is just a fantastic radio for APRS,
APRS over FM analog style APRS. So we're going to
be doing some testing on that upcoming one hundred and
fifty two dollars today on Amazon fifteen percent off. Comes
with four thousand memory channels, pretty indicative of a lot
of DMR radios have that mini channels in them. Twenty
nine hundred million amp hour battery, five hundred thou important

(13:00):
contacts for your DMR channels. It comes with AES two
fifty six encryption, which we don't use in HAM radio,
but most DMRs have that type of encryption in it.
So this one is I'm looking forward to this one.
I'm looking forward to trying this one out and carrying
it with me a little bit more often and seeing
how well it works on APRS, because I've been doing
a lot of stuff with APRS lately. So if you're

(13:20):
interested in this type of radio, this one has DMR
and analog and APRS and GPS and a few other
things in it, with a lot of memory channels. One
hundred and fifty two dollars on Amazon today, upgrading the
DMR game just a little bit. Any Tone earlier this
year came out with a D one six eight UV
and these are sold over on the Bridge Coom website.

(13:42):
Bridgecom often sells these radios with bundles. You can get
it with a bunch of accessories, extra batteries, antennas, desk charger,
all that kind of good stuff. One ninety nine is
the price on today's radio, and you're probably not going
to see a better price come up on that, because
any Tone's really good or really bad. However, you want
to look at it about setting a price and saying

(14:02):
do not sell below this price. Icon does this, Jesu
does this sometimes. Ken Wood's been known to do this before,
but Anytonne's one of the few companies out of China
that does this. They're like, this is the minimum price
you're allowed to sell us for. Don't sell it any cheaper.
So what Bridgecom does is they add all these assessories
that you would probably want anyway to the price of
the radio, and they give you the assessories for free.
So you're still playing the same price for the radio,

(14:24):
but you're getting a lot of assessories for free in
these bundle packages that they're often trying to promote on
their website. Any tone probably makes the best and most
robust DMR dual band radio in the amateur radio world today.
There's a lot of really good DMR radios out there,
and there's a lot of really good DMR radios that
are made for the commercial world, like Harris and Motorola

(14:46):
in those guys, but those are primarily all mono band. Okay,
Motorola has some dual band and tryband P twenty five radios,
but to my knowledge, I don't think they have anything
that's DMR that's multi banned, but I could be wrong
about that. I haven't looked. But as far as radios
that are made for the amateur radio market and amateur
Radio World ANYTNE is some of my favorite. They have

(15:07):
the most features. They were one of the first ones.
They have true aprs over FM, and they're just very
good radio. I still carry my eight six eight UV
two plus with me everywhere I go. It sits on
the rack behind me in the truck, so it's always
with me. It's got a USBC charterable battery, it's always
charged up, and it's ready to go. So if you're
into DMR or want to get into DMR for a
low price point, this one six eight UV is a

(15:29):
good place to start. Now we're gonna go back to
the Japanese made radios, and this one's definitely made Japan.
We're getting into some of the more expensive stuff. Now
we're getting into some of the digital stuff. We talked
a little bit about a couple of DMR radios earlier
on in the video, and this one is gonna be
a Jesus System Fusion radio. Now, one question I often

(15:50):
get after a video like this is, Okay, where should
I actually start? Should I actually start at the lowest point,
just work my way up and buy a bunch of radios,
or should I buy the most expensive radio and start there?
I can't afford that much. I can't afford six seven
hundred dollars for an HT. I get that, I do,
I get that. I tell people start buy the most

(16:13):
expensive radio that you can afford, and if that's a
twenty five or thirty dollars radio today, then do that. Okay,
having a radio in your hand is better than having
no radio in your hand. So if that's all you
can afford today, then do that. But generally speaking, if
you're gonna buy cheaper radio today and get into ham
radio and get to see in all the things that
the more expensive radios do and get get to really

(16:33):
like the hobby and like talking on the radio, you're
eventually gonna want to upgrade anyway, cause you're not gonna
want to use a thirty five dollars radio for the
next five to ten years. Generally speaking. I know some
guys will come along the comments and say, well, I
still I want to use it all. Well, that's great,
but it's probably not the only radio you have, and
if it is, you're missing out on a lot of stuff. Okay,
So get the most expensive radio that you can afford

(16:54):
today and go from there and just don't look back.
Just use it and go. That's the most important thing.
This is is Yazu's flagship Jesu System Fusion radio. This
is their FT five D. I've got this radio myself.
I really really like it. It is an excellent quality
radio and it uses the System Fusion digital voice mode.

(17:17):
This also has one of the best APRS menus that
I've seen. Now, some people don't like Yazu menus, and
I get that. But nevertheless, even though the menus might
be a little wonky, okay, Yazu and Kinwood have the
most fully featured APRS options in their radios today. The

(17:38):
FT five, the FT three that's been discontinued, a couple
of the mobile radios from Yazu, and a couple of
the kin ones we're going to talk about here in
a moment have some of the best APRS features in
the radio today. So if you're interested in APRS and
taking full advantage of it, and you want a just
a good quality, very good front end, very good sound

(17:59):
and audio both on transmit and receive, and a hefty
HT this one actually has a touch screen as well.
Three seventy nine today, at the Gigabarts website again, you
can get double points with the coupon code of KC
five HWB. It's not really a coupon, it just gives
you double points instead of spending. You get a dollar
for every point with no codes at all. So if
you go spend three seventy nine, you get three hundred

(18:20):
and seventy nine points, but if you use my code,
you'll get double that and that works on everything in
the store. So now we're gonna go to icon ja
uh jays us a Japanese brand, one of the best
ones out there. Icon is another very very good Japanese brand, Okay,
And the ID fifty is a fairly new HT radio. Also,
it's not their flagship radio, it's the second from the top.

(18:41):
But I'm not gonna include the flagship today. I'm gonna
include the ID fifty, which is a monochrome screen that's
a little bit smaller and it doesn't have bluetooth. I
want ohere and ask GROC. I'm like, okay, Grock, tell
me again, what is the difference between the Icon ID
fifty two and the ID fifty two A, the ID
fifty A and the ID fifty two Anniversary Edition. So,

(19:02):
in a nutshell, the original ID fifty two was micro
USB charging. Okay, it has a full color screen, Bluetooth,
and d Star. The ID fifty came out after the
original ID fifty two. It has a smaller screen that's
only monochrome, no color, and it also has d Star,
but it has no Bluetooth, but it does have USB C.

(19:23):
They finally went to USBC. This was the first one
they did that with first radio, first handheld radio that
Icon did with USBC, and then later on the ID
fifty two, a anniversary edition came out. It came in
a different color and had the color screen, the largest screen,
and instead of being micro it was USB C and
this those are a couple hundred dollars more than this one.
So generally speaking, I say, you know, get the ID fifty.

(19:45):
This is a great radio. It's just a monochrome screen.
Most people don't care about that. It's not touch screen.
Most people don't care about that, or at least I
don't care about touch screen myself. And it has d Star,
no Bluetooth, and a USBC chargeable. So it is a
great quality Icon radio. And that brings us to the
last number eleven radio And this is one of my
favorites by far. This is the brand new Kinwood THHD

(20:08):
seventy five. Now, I told you earlier when we were
talking about the UV Pro that there's only one other
radio that's got a full open kiss T and C
that you can connect to Bluetooth with, and this is it.
This is it. The D seventy five has a full
open kiss T and C that you can connect to
Bluetooth and you can use wind link over FM packet,

(20:28):
or you can use APRS over FM with apres droid
or some other app on your phone. This radio also
has the two hundred and twenty megahertz band, so it's
actually a tryband radio. The Icon and the Yazoo that
we just spoke about are both dual band radios. They
all have about one thousand memory channels roughly, but the
Kinwood has a third band two hundred and twenty megahertz,

(20:50):
which I love the two to twenty band, so that
gives you an additional thing there. It does have bluetooth,
It does have full APRS as well, one of the
few radios we're talking about today that has full APRS,
and the menus in the Kinwood are probably the best
APRS menus of any HT radio. That's made in twenty
twenty five. It's easy to use, it's easy to navigate through,

(21:11):
and it's full featured. It's not missing any key elements
of APRS, and it's got everything you'd ever want to
do with messaging, with beaconing, with setting objects and reading
and transmitting and receiving and all that kind of good stuff.
So it is a full fledged APRS radio with a
built in CNC that will allow you to access win
link and APRS Droid and lots of other stuff like

(21:33):
that coming in at six pot thirty nine ninety five today.
It is not a cheap, not an inexpensive HT, but
it's probably if you already get one of these, is
probably one of the last HTS you'll ever buy. I
love mine. I carry it with me everywhere. I have
an extended battery on it that I use and when
I'm at a hamfest walking around with an HT radio
on my hip. This is what it's been for most
of this year of twenty twenty five. So that's all

(21:54):
eleven of them. That's all eleven of the ones that
I've picked. What do you guys think? Do you think
I should have included something else? I know there's there's
two or three that I left out on purpose, and
there's a there's a few more that I was like, well,
I'm not really familiar with that model, so I'm not
going to talk about it today. It's certainly not an
exhaustive list. It's not a complete list. These are just
my top eleven picks for the best HT of twenty
twenty five. So tell me what you would pick in

(22:16):
the comments. Blow and thanks for watching today.