TALKCOOP KT-8900D 25W/20W Dual Band VHF/UHF(136-174/400-480MHZ) Mini Color Screen Quad-Standy Mobile Car Radio 2 Way Radios Walkie Talkie Car Mobile Ham Radio+ Free Programming Cable and CD

I really wanted to like this radio.It's tiny, looks cool, doesn't heat up when you transmit (has a cooling fan). And if you spend some time playing around with the menus, it's not that hard to program even though the manual is awful.But in the end I returned the radio to Amazon for one big reason----receive sensitivity. I have an another 2 meter radio and it didn't take long for me to realize the other radio was much much more sensitive. Weaker stations I could receive with the other radio were just non-existent on the TalkCoop. If you were close to a repeater you probably would not even notice the problem but since I do a lot of simplex, it was very obvious right from the start.I researched the problem on the internet and there is no fix------it's just the way the radio works.

Pros:EXACT same as a QYT KT-8900D, but a few bucks cheaper.Very affordable.Quad watch w/ prioritized channels!Good included microphone.25w/20w TX (goes down as it heats up.)TX/RX meters.CHIRP support.3.5mm audio output on the back.DATA input supports PTT.Programming cable included.Sturdy mount with plenty of screws included.Temporary squelch disable with MONITOR button.Customizable colors and boot display text.Neutral:Fan noise -- it's not loud, but you can hear it. Nice to know it's getting hot though.It's tiny! Comparable to the width of 1 and a half UV-5Rs, in terms of front facing depth.No way to disable alarm functionality.Remote stun/kill via tones.Cons:Slow scanning speed -- comparable to a UV-82. Half the speed of a UV-5R.Quad watch only lets you hear one, prioritized signal at a time. No mixing.Manual doesn't say how to access 1.25m/81cm. If I find out I will update.Low is 20w? Doesn't make any sense -- would have preferred 10w.Firmware is NOT upgradable -- it is a burn once chip.Other things to know:If you plan on using this indoors, you need a 12v/13.8v power supply. Unfortunately, I couldn't find good information on current draw, but I believe it's 5-10A. So I got a 10A power supply from iSaddle.There's a battery display at the top right, I don't know if it works or not.

It has loud speaker and receives well, but does not transmit good. I used it for communication between two vehicles on a recent 25 day trip, and in beginning it would transmit at a range of up to half mile and towards the end of trip it is struggling with transmitting just few hundred yards, which is not acceptable of ham radio running on this much power. I will be replacing it with another radio that I have used in a past. The only good thing that this radio had was a small size, but at the end of day it was a waste of 80 dollars.

Basically a good little radio for the money. Build quality is decent, with some minor issues. The two large control knobs are rubber and have no insert for the control shaft. They will come loose if you aren't careful. Should either have a metal insert or be made from hard plastic. Sensitivity seems ok, can hear many area repeaters. Don't know yet how the front-end will respond to congested areas with multiple sources of RF, but eventually intend to use the radio as a mobile unit. Transmit audio gets good reports, receive audio is surprisingly good and loud with the little built-in speaker. Wish they had used a standard 3-cct. audio jack on the rear instead of that odd 4-cct. jack so an external speaker could be plugged in. Have to find a 4-cct. plug somewhere, I guess. The included microphone seems well-made and the display is decent. My fan has yet to come on, even when running high power, but the radio never gets extremely hot. Thank goodness for Chirp - would not want to program this radio manually! Typical quirky, convoluted Chinese firmware interface! The manual is all but useless. With all it's little issues, this is still a great buy as long as you don't pay more than $80. There are a couple of versions of the KT-8900D out there for over $100 - too much!

The manual is a little amusing to read given it and the radio are Hetcho in China and translated to Chinglish. In any case its informative enough to get the radio set up for use in a relatively short amount of time. I did you computer based soft ware to do the radio set up instead of trying to do it manually thru the front panel all though that is not too difficult either.

Unit worked great for a few months, but then stopped working. When I tried contacting the seller their email was no longer working. Not impressed by their customer service.

The radio has been a solid performer so far. The buttons on the front face are hard to access given the placement of the knobs. My biggest disappointment is that the kit did not include a programming cable despite saying that it does. The unit is a beast to program without CHIRP. Pay special attention to programming repeater frequencies by hand. You do not set the offset direction and frequency directly as that will not work. You have to program the receive frequency and save it, then program the transmit frequency and save that over the top of the channel you just programmed with the receive frequency. This sets the offset and +/- automatically. If you set them directly from the menu settings, they will be ignored. With strange programming like that, the cable would have been really nice to have.

Great radio for price.