D**H
Dual-band DMR for about $75.
I wasn't sure what to expect from a dual-band DMR radio that cost only $75, but I was pleasantly surprised. The radio has some quirks, but for the most part it works very well.In the box are the usual accessories. A free driverless programming cable is also included. A printed manual is not. You can download the manual and free software from Radioddity's website. The popular CHIRP programming software does not support this radio at this time, but the free software from Radioddity isn't bad and gets the job done. Thankfully the RD-5R's firmware is upgradable too. My radio came with firmware v2.00.06. A newer version was available on the website along with the v1.0.0.2 software. This is where encountered the first quirk with this radio. The updater program is not in English. Fortunately, there is a doc in English explaining how to update the firmware. The process is very simple and takes a few seconds. After updating, my radio has firmware v2.00.09.Once I updated the radio, installed the programming software, and charged the battery fully, I spent about 30 minutes figuring out some more quirks within the software. Most of them aren't really the fault of Baofeng. There is just no standardization for DMR Codeplugs. Almost every radio and its software do things differently. After messing around with the software and some trial and error, I managed to create my own Codeplug from scratch. From start to finish, I was on the air in about 2 hours. Unfortunately there aren't any VHF DMR systems in my area yet, so I tested on a couple UHF systems. At first I just tested the Parrot TG. I thought the audio was about as good as can be expected. It was clear. The RX audio on the RD-5R's internal speaker is OK. It's a little "tinny", but acceptable. I had a couple of conversations with the locals. All of them said my audio was very good, and they were quite surprised when I told them what radio I was using, and what I paid for it. I've had the radio on all day, and so far the battery has shown no signs of giving up yet. So I'd say battery life is excellent. The included antenna is nothing special, but it's an upgrade to the antenna that came with the original UV-5R. This one is thin and flexible.All in all, I'm very impressed with the RD-5R. Is it a Motorola? No, of course not. The radio does do its job though, and it does it well at a price almost anyone can afford. It does take some patience, and like every DMR radio I own, it has a learning curve. In the end, I'm glad I purchased it. It's an excellent low cost addition to my radio collection.
C**I
A surprisingly wonderful radio
The RD-5R is a surprisingly wonderful radio, especially for the value you get for the money.PROS:Price range of course. Youcannot beat this price and get the same value. Well do e Radioddity!Dimensions and battery life. Also it is sturdy enough for daily use. Being so small comes in handy, easy to pocket and store in glove boxes.CONS:A bit hard to program without the desktop software, but this is common for this type of radios. Nevertheless, it has a lot of programmable features on the go from the keypad menu.Sound/speaker quality reflects the low price and it is to be expected.No promiscuous mode: this would be a great feature that would kill the competition.The desktop software is a bit old school and it needs to be modernized. A lot of repetitious work could be helped by just integrating copy and paste.Always keep up with firmware updates. They seem to be improving the radio with every release.I really enjoy this radio. And yes, it is a wonderful first radio, a great emergency device, and it does work surprisingly well! Enjoy.
E**R
Firmware and software has many serious problems.
The software and firmware for this radio are both very poor. Radioddity seems to make decent hardware but they just don't seem to understand how, or care, to make software and firmware that works correctly. The same is true for the Radioddity GD-77 which isn't surprising as this is basically a GD-77 in a Baofeng UV-5R style package. But the software and firmware for this radio is even less mature than the GD-77 and the PC software at least has even more problems.Beware this radio, like the GD-77, is designed primarily for DMR digital use. FM analog is an ugly stepchild for this radio. For those curious, download the manual and you'll find very little about FM analog. They didn't even add VFO capability to the GD-77 until recently. There's no conventional squelch adjustment either. So if you're looking at this as a UV-5R with more channels you're likely to be confused, disappointed, and it's nowhere near as mature and stable as the UV-5R. It also does NOT work with the excellent CHIRP software. You're stuck with the horrible Radioddity software.My RD-5R indicates it came with 2.00.06 firmware (see pic). But the newest firmware on the Radioddity website is 1.00.01 (see pic). Which is correct? If you run their latest UPDATE.EXE you get a screen full of question marks (see pic)! Their 1.0.0.1 software was even worse. It installed the PC software to this directory and the software was application was named just "V" (i.e. V.EXE):"C:\C\N V"All Radioddity software installs to C:\ without asking where you want it which is very poor practice and less secure than using the Windows Program folders and could be a problem for some users. Windows up up within the application partly off the screen even with a 1920 x 1080 monitor. It's very sloppy software, screens full of question marks, etc, all lend no confidence to Radioddity. I would suggest downloading and installing the software before buying any Radioddity radio.Just like with the GD-77 you can only access channels from within Zones. And since the GD-77 first came out in September 2017 users have been complaining you can only have 16 channels in a Zone but over 9 months and many releases Radioddity has not fixed this severe limitation. The RD-5R suffers this same serious problem. Let's say you want to assign all your favorite repeaters, talkgroups, and contacts in Los Angles to a zone named Los Angeles and all your favorites in San Francisco to a zone named San Francisco. There are hundreds of repeaters in each of those cities and hundreds of talkgroups worldwide but you can only have 16 repeaters, analog frequencies, and DMR talkgroups/contacts COMBINED, in each Zone. You need a different channel for each DMR talkgroup or contact. So it's a huge limitation to only have 16 channels per zone. This behaves in some ways more like a 16 channel radio.I have shown a picture of the latest RD-5R software (Zones work the same in the latest GD-77 software). Notice how there are 16 channels assigned to the Zone list on the right but the button to add more from the left is greyed out? That's because it won't let you add more channels. I don't think Radioddity understands how big of a problem this is or they are otherwise unable to fix it after many releases for the GD-77 and copied the same flaw to the RD-5R.The PC software has many other problems. Channels only are usable if they are assigned to a Zone and scanning only works if they are assigned to a Scan List. But the CSV import capability does not let you assign Zones or Scan Lists to channels. So if you say import 128 channels from your Baofeng UV-5R you then have to then manually assign those to 8 different new empty Zones (16 channels each). Things get even worse with trying to import digital channels as then you also have to worry about talkgroups, contacts, and RX Group Lists.That brings up another problem many have been complaining about since September last year. With most DMR radios, even other Chinese DMR radios, you can set up a DMR repeater and simply monitor the talkgroups on that repeater. But the RD-5R forces you, for no good reason, to add every talkgroup and contact to a RX Group List or you will never hear anything. This further complicates an already complex process setting up the radio. And you're limited to only 16 per RX Group List which is an even bigger problem. You can't just assign everything to a master RX Group List. You have to divide them up, just like with channels and Zones. It makes both setting up the radio much more difficult and, worse, it makes using it more difficult as it's difficult to remember where you were forced to divide up and save everything.Radioddity doesn't seem to understand users don't want to be forced to scroll through 16 channels/talkgroups/contacts and then forced to use several key presses to go into the menu, select another Zone, exit out, and scroll through the next 16 channels/talkgroups/contacts. Allowing larger Zone, Scanlist and RX Group lists only increases the flexibility of the radio and makes things easier. There's no downside.You can double click the Channel folder on the left and it opens a scrollable window of all the channels. You can ADD channels from that master list but they are just empty channels and there is NO way to populate each new channel, or edit existing channels, from that list. That has to be done by awkwardly opening each channel individually from the left pane. There is also no form of group editing for channels or talkgroups. In many cases you can't highlight more than one item. And even when you can, let's say you want to delete a block of channels or talkgroups, it lets you highlight the block but clicking delete just deletes one instead of the whole block. It's very crude software.Radiooddity keeps changing the compatibility between the radio firmware, the PC software, and the DAT file (codeplug) that saves your configuration. What this means is you can spend hours configuring your radio and finally getting it to sort of work, apply the next update, and you have to start over because Radioddity changed the format of the DAT file (codeplug) and your old one is no longer compatible.There are many problems with Chinese to English translation. Talkgroups are incorrectly named "Digital Contacts", some of the help within the PC software doesn't make much sense. There's supposed to be a password to unlock more features in the PC software and here's the documentation for how to do it from Radioddity in their latest update (it's been like this since the beginning):"Ctrl + Alt + Shift + 5£¬Then enter the password¡°DMR5R¡±"There are many other issues with the software and firmware but the above should give you an idea. I hope Radioddity can fix the many problems but we've been waiting 9 months for the above to be fixed with the GD-77 and they're still not fixed. So I don't give it a lot of hope. Radioddity seems more interested in putting effort into their website, trying to get favorable reviews, and releasing new products, rather than fixing the things people want fixed most.To compare this radio to the GD-77 it's clearly based on the GD-77 and mostly similar with a slightly different display and slightly different buttons. It's a bit smaller and lighter which is nice. The battery is rated 1800 mAH vs 2200 mAH for the GD-77 but it's well documented that Chinese mAH ratings are largely fictional so I have no idea if there's any real difference in capacity. The GD-77 feels better in the hand and bit more solid and professional without the cheesy fake metal trim tacked on like the RD-5R has.If you're familiar with the UV-5R series you will probably prefer the user interface on the RD-5R. The GD-77 lacks VFO/MR and BAND buttons. VFO use on the GD-77 is an awkward afterthought. The GD-77 adds an orange programmable button on top. The factory antennas are different. The GD-77 has a stiff antenna that's longer than a UV-5R and the RD-5R has an even longer "floppy" thin antenna. So they each of their pluses and minus in terms of the hardware. But the big issue is they both suffer serious firmware and software problems.Radioddity seems to have put their effort into releasing the RD-5R before fixing the many problems with the GD-77 it's based on. They abandoned updates for the problem filled GD-55 before the GD-77 even came out. I wouldn't be surprised if they release a GD-99 before fixing the many problems with the GD-77 and RD-5R. If you buy one hoping they'll eventually fix most of the problems their track record is not good and it will be too late to return it. Buyer beware.
Trustpilot
1 month ago
1 week ago
