TYT TH-UV8000D 10W Ultra-high Output Power Amateur Handheld Transceiver, Dual Band, Dual Display and Dual Stand

This review covers 2 separate items because Amazon won't let me review them separately (it takes me to the same review when I try to write one for the car charger eliminator).----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Radio (5/5 rating)My first unit was DOA (keypad "3 6 9 #" buttons wouldn't work) but easily exchanged thru Amazon and the second unit works quite nicely. This is my 3rd TYT brand radio (first two are sub-mini model) - and this is every bit as good as the others I have.RX Quality -- I live in a "RF-Soup" with a NOAA transmitter within 1/2 mile, hospital pagers and fire-dispatch tower within a few hundred feet of my apartment. Many cheaper radios this all bleeds over making it hard to hear, but the TYT radios seem to perform comparable to my more expensive Yaesu and ICOM units with very nice selectivity and filtering of stray signals. This radio also does very nicely at picking up weaker signals, such as repeaters out 30-60 miles (again that I normally only hear on very high quality name-brand rigs).TX Quality -- I haven't had an opportunity to hook this up to an oscilloscope to check for spurious emissions but when I key up on a local repeater I got responses saying the audio is very good and clear and that my signal was strong with minimal hash even as I walked around indoors. This leads me to believe that it's at least some amount higher power than 5 watts because I know I'm unreadable thru the brick walls of my apartment using an ordinary 5W Yaesu handheld.Memory -- I haven't attempted to program it by hand but the TYT software (not included but downloadable free, Amazon won't let me link to the manufacturer's website though) reports it has 128 memory channels. It isn't that amazing of a software (nor is either of the other TYT apps I have) but it's sufficient to get everything working.Crossband Repeat -- This is one of the neat features of this, I've only seen it in other far more expensive radios. It does require ticking a box in the aforementioned software to enable the menu-option but then it's fairly easy to operate, I would say it's no more difficult than my Yaesu mobile radio to configure and I was able to hear myself call out testing "both directions" so it does seem to function as advertised.Belt clip -- not that impressive, it seems like the spring is a bit lax in tolerance, I had mine pop out of position and had to bend it slightly to fit better. I'm not too concerned about it, half the time I end up removing belt clips from my radios and keeping them in a pocket anyway.Word of warning, since this is an abnormally high power radio, avoid touching the metal battery charge contacts while transmitting on high-power. I managed to get a minor RF-burn when I was holding it in my left hand, my palm just touches the outer contact. That isn't unique to this radio - it would affect any of the "more than 5 watt" handheld radios because the body of the radio is part of the counterpoise so you are effectively touching a part of the antenna. This is why these should only be used by people who have proper training and knowledge of RF energy.I would absolutely buy the radio again.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Battery Eliminator (0/5 rating)The battery eliminator looks good at first glance but when I went to use it nothing happened. After taking some measurements I concluded that it functioned (got the right voltage and polarity) but careful inspection shows the metal contact isn't properly aligned on the battery eliminator (negative is 1/4" too close to center, maybe too low as well). I can probably mill out the right location and fix it so I'm keeping it, I don't really feel like going thru a return process since it looks like a design flaw not a simple one-defective-unit.

This was hard for me, returning a radio that has so much going for it. But even with the help of the best YT video tutorial, I was unable to program even one repeater and channel, and I'm not a newbie. I have several Baofeng HTs which also came with poor manuals, but there is a large community of users, some of whom have actually written REPLACEMENT manuals for the Baofeng UV5R, and they make the radios usable. I hope somebody does this for the TYT HT radio I am returning, because it has promise. Very solid construction, good fit and finish. TYT needs to hire a person who knows English AND knows how to use the radio to write a new user manual. I even found an undocumented feature: you can reset the radio by holding down the F key when you turn it on. But then the screen says "Reset?" and gives no clue how to respond yes or no. Perhaps when/if enough of these radios are returned due to poor documentation, TYT will get the message to spend some time and money on instructions for it. I like the low price, but I would rather spend more and be able to use the radio The first words in the manual, after 'thank you' are: "This radio of modern design is reasonable structure with stable functions." Replace the word 'radio' with 'farm', 'ranch', or 'barn' and the sentence makes more sense. It goes downhill from there. If you are tech savvy and only need a spec sheet and menu table, you might be able to get this radio working, but you still need the software and programming cable (sold separately or in the E version)to activate the cross-band repeater function. And that is another nightmare, as you will learn on YT from experts who spent days trying to get the drivers for an outdated cable chip, and so on. Sure, if you have days to dedicate to this and don't mind such hassles, you can save some money, or you can buy a radio made in Japan that has a usable manual and be up and running quickly. Four to five stars for the radio quality, two stars or one for the instructions = three stars.