Buy it for Life

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A place to share practical, durable and quality made products that are made to last, with an emphasis on upcycled and sustainable products!

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Good budget walkie talkie? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 2 days ago by AmanitaCaesarea@slrpnk.net to c/buyitforlife@slrpnk.net

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Hey Lemmings. I'm looking for a decent budget walkie talkie.

My use case is pretty casual. Nothing crazy like survival situations or long-distance missions. Mainly for small hikes and some work communication where my phone isn’t ideal.

Criteria: • Budget: up to ~50€ (ideally a set of 2 or more) • Region: Europe (putting this here for shopping options.) • License-free frequency

I’ve been eyeing a few options: • Motorola 42. The blue kiddie vibe kinda puts me off lol • Retevis models seem to have decent reviews for the price • Jucjet 4-set for around 44€ looks tempting for the pack deal

Has anyone used these or got other recommendations? Rockie Talkie keeps popping up but it's expensive and way above my use case. Cheers

Throwaway thoughts: I'm trying to decentralize my tech life away from my phone. Radio comms feel like a step in the right direction. Meshtastic is also on the todo list. Might even look into pagers soon.

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[–] BenM2023@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I am a Motorola fan. Used to use their VHF kit back in the day and it took a lot of abuse.

At work we have their averagely rugged yellow things T82 iirc that work out about €35 each

At home, for the goblins, we have a pair of yellow Motos T72 iirc similarly rugged €60 the pair.

Both models have good range and are easy to set up. Work ones do group programming so you program 1 bung the rest on programming mode and transmit the config. Boom. 10 radios programmed identically in less time than manually doing 2.

[–] AmanitaCaesarea@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

T82 extreme pmr goes for 84€ (2 walkies), standard goes for 72€.... 36 each like you said.

Motorola is quite a recognised brand. If we are looking at "buy for life" stuff then it may be worth bumping up the budget for...

Would u say that the Motorola's would outlast a chinese walkie like Baofeng? How long have you had the t82 for?

A baofeng 2-pack is 30€, so I'm just trying to figure out if a Motorola is the better investment...

[–] Soapbox@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

I have some Motorola FRS walkie talkies that are 20+ years old and work fine.

[–] BenM2023@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

The T82 extremes are what we use at work... We have 10 of them and, despite being used by generally incompetent users, seem to survive day to day abuse in a high school. We have had them for nearly two years and have no casualties yet. Other schools in the area also use them - with no reported issues.

I know a couple of multi-band, so not specifically pmr, Baofeng users but can't comment on their ruggedness or longevity other than to say I haven't heard bad things.

Another popular brand to look at might be Hytera; possibly a bit out of budget for you. We did look at those, instead of cheaper handsets, but price won in the end.