E1435: BEST Handheld Ham Radio for 2024 | Top HT Ham Radios

The best HT radio HT for handy talking or handheld transceiver? What is the best one for twenty twenty four? I'm going to give you my top fourteen radios that range in price, and I'm going to show you features of each one and let you pick and you decide what you want. Let's go. These videos are popular every year. I've been doing them since twenty twenty and I really enjoy these videos. I don't want to do them too early in the year because we don't know what's gonna

come out yet. But since the Huntsville Hamfest just ended and the Tokyo Hamfare just happened, we get to see some new HTS on the market. So let's talk about my top fourteen today. As I do with most of these videos, these are going to range in price. We're going to start with the lowest price and we're going to go up to the highest price. So this is number fourteen. Number fourteen is the lowest price now you can and a lot on a lot of these videos.

I will start with the Balfang UV five R. And you can still get a Balfang UV five R on Amazon for some times between twenty three to twenty seven dollars, a kind of range in price. Sometimes you can get a package which a bunch of assessories all for like thirty five thirty eight bucks something like that. A lot of different options out there for that. However, I'm going to start today number fourteen with the Balfang UV seventeen R. And the reason for this I did a video about

this radio not too long ago. This one has airban receive, Noah weather receiving. It has a USB C battery, It has about nine hundred and ninety nine memory channels, and it this one and the UV twenty one and even the twenty ones. I higher number seventeen. I'm not sure which one came out first. UV thirteen I think I think the thirteen came out first. I did video on

that one too. All of these kind of form factor radios, they all hold more channels than your standard UV five R or UV eighty two, which is one hundred and twenty eight channel radio. So this is going to have more channels, more features, color screen, larger screen, USB C, battery recharging, airband receive Noah Weather receive seven watts instead of the standard five watts, and for only thirty two dollars on Amazon for this radio. This is an excellent

beginner's radio. I would not recommend this radio to someone who's had their license for a few years unless you just want to knock around radio. If you want an extra radio to put in your pack, you're putting your truck and have with you all the time. Take out to the hunting lease, you drop it, you forget it, you leave it somewhere, you break it, you don't care because it's only thirty two bucks. You don't want to do that with your four hundred dollars. HT. This might

be for you. That's exactly what I use mine for mine in my RV, and it's always there. You easily recharge via USBC. If I ever need it, there you go Balfang UV seventeen R on Amazon. The link will be in the description below today for this and everything else we talk about. Number thirteen is from a company called b Tech Balfang Tech. They are in North Dakota, maybe South Dakota, it's one of them. They're an American company that imports radios from China, sometimes upgrades them, sometimes

comes out with new models. You're gonna see some models in b Tech that you don't see on regular Bowfang. This is one of my favorite, and this has been on my list several years in a row. This is the b Tech UV five by three. It looks just like a Balfang UV five R, except the received sensitivity is a little bit better. The front end rejection is a little bit better, which means you're not going to get as many chirps and birdies in it as you would on like a like a twenty three dollars Bowfang

GUV five R, but this one includes two twenty. It includes the two hundred and twenty megahertz band, so it is a triband radio where most of your bow Fang GUV five rs are just dual band radios. Now. A lot of the times you can through software. You can open up a UV five R to do tryband. But my experience has been that this UV five x three from BTech performs better, it sounds better, it lasts longer. I've got the extended battery on mine, which you can find those for UV five RS two, and it's just

an all around good radio. I've had my BTECHUV five x three for about five years at the time of this recording. It still works great. I use it at my hunting lease all the time and it works very well. So sixty five dollars on Amazon today. Check the prices. One thing about prices real quick, because every year this comes up and people say, oh, well, you said the price was this, but the price is actually this today and he's watching my video three or six or nine

months later. Prices fluctuate. Shouldn't surprise anyone. Prices fluctuate. All the prices I'm telling you right now are the prices in September of twenty twenty four, but they're going to fluctuate over time. So check all the links in the description blow and check all of your favorite ham radio retailers for the most current pricing. Number twelve is another one that's been on my list or three three times.

This is the tyit thh three point fifty. Also a tryband radio comes from by two Way Radios dot com, who is one of our sponsors sixty nine ninety nine for this radio. The great thing about this radio, and he doesn't really have a picture right here that shows this very well, but the great thing about this radio is it's not only tryband, but it's tried display. So you can see and I did a video about this

radio when it was new several years ago. You can see all three bands on the screen at the same time, so you can see your one hundred and forty four megahertz ban at the top, your two twenty megahertz ban in the middle, and your for forty megahertz band at the bottom, and you can switch those around a little bit kind of off and on two meters two twenty four forty U Nagoya makes an NA seven seven to one.

I think it is antenna that's a tryband antenna. This one and the UV five x three both come with two intennas. One is dual band, one is two twenty only kind of lame in my opinion that they come that way. But Nagoya makes a try band antenna. A couple other companies do as well, So you can get a Nagoya or a Mellowave or a Smiley antenna that's trybanded that you can use on a tryband radio, and it make its where you can use all three of

the bands. But this one's great because it's been out for several years, it's still is sold, it's still popular. It's I have mine that's five or six years old and it still works well. I've never had to change the battery on it or anything. And it's a tryband radio. And I really love the two hundred twenty mega Hurtz band. So if you're into two hundred and twenty mega hurts, check the repeaters in your area, check the people and

the ham clubs in your area. Find out if there's any two hundred and twenty megahertz activity in your area, and if there is, one of these tryband radios might be for you. Number thirteen the UV five y three or number twelve the thh three fifty, those might be for you. But if not, then just go with the dual band radio. Nothing wrong with that. Either. Number eleven is the walks on or Oshang UV nine D. Mate. Now, I personally carry this radio fairly often into the field.

Better Safe Radio, who we're going to talk about here in just one minute. They have USB C chargeable batteries for all of these UV nine series walks on. So if it's it says walks on UV nine or kg dash UV nine whatever the last letter is, there's a UV nine D, there's a UV nine P, there's a UV nine K, a couple other ones. If it has UV nine in it, then it They all use the same battery, so you can get a USBC rechargeable battery from Better Safe Radio. Again, we're going to talk about

them here in just a minute. But this one right here is a dual band radio ten wats of power per band two meters and four forty and it's orange. I like the fact that it's orange. That is really pleasing to me. I take this one. This is probably the one that I use most often at my hunting lease. I have three or four radios. I keep it in my hunting leaks or I don't keep that. I always

take them with me when I go. This one's great because I have actually dropped this in the field before and left it somewhere, left it in the deer stand, it fell off of my truck, or I left it on my truck and I drove off and forgot it. And when you come back by that area, you can see that orange radio glaring at you from the dirt much better than you can see a black radio. So it stands out in the crowd. It's easy to see,

it's easy to spot. It works very well. Again. I've had mine for several years and I still use it. I upgraded to the USBC battery recently, and it works even better now because I can just plug it into my brick, my charging brick, or my twelve volt power supply, my battery box whatever, charge it in the same place. I charged several of my radios and my phone, and it works great for what it is. So the UV ninety Mate from by two Way Radios that will be

in the description blow as well. So the UV ninety Mate from by two Way Radios comes in at one hundred and sixty dollars today and it has nine hundred ninety nine memory channels. Also, most of these UV nine series radios from Oshane walks On has nine hundred ninety nine memory channels. So memory channels is something that you want to look for when choosing your first radio. For sure. Number ten is brand new and I just got one of these in. I just got one of these in,

so I'm kind of tinkering with it right now. I want to do some stuff with it before I make a video. But this is the b Tech uv pro IP sixty seven dual band VHF UHF radio with APRS, Bluetooth, GPS, text messaging, aviation band scanner, Noah whether alerts and USBC chargeable battery one hundred and sixty five dollars. Today on Amazon, there's a uv pro GMRS that I've tinkered with a little bit. And with this free app, you download that

BLUETOOTHS to your radio. You can send text messages from the app through the radio to a friend with this radio and app, and if you're off grid, you can text each other. You can see where each other are on the map because both radios have GPS. And it's a great off grid tool because it uses your phone and it uses or any Android device, phone, tablet, and it uses the radio and instead of sending texts and GPS over the Internet, it's sending it over the air.

So you have to be in range of one another. You can't be several miles away, ten twenty one hundred miles away something like that with a handheld radio, unless you like up on top of a mountain or something that might work. But this is a really cool tool and cool feature for the modern Ham radio, the modern day Ham radio, and I'm really looking forward to trying this again. I've got one of these. I haven't tinkered with it very much at the time of this recording,

but BTech makes a great product. I've got many of their radios and I've I'm very impressed with what they do, So I feel pretty confident in telling you guys that you should check this one out. We're gonna learn more about it in a video I make later on. But seamless Bluetooth connectivity for enhanced control effort less lee sink your UV pro with the BTech UV Programmer app on iOS and Android. Okay, so it is on iOS too. Emergency ready with Noah weather alerts and built in compass.

Be ready for any challenge with real time no Weather alerts and integrated compass from navigation frequency detection. With the uv pros Frequency Sinc Rapid Scanning, you can quickly locate and lock on a nearby frequencies, whether you're coordinating a team or scanning emergency channels. Complete package for easy setup.

Get started immediately with the uv pro radio A twenty six hundred million pire battery, antenna belt clip see USB charging cable, screws in a screwdriver, detailed user manual, et cetera, et cetera. IP sixty seven rated for dust and impact. Stay connected worldwide. Bluetoth compatibility allows you to connect to a global network of users through the programmer app. I wonder if that app. Maybe that app connects to each other over the Internet, so you have added features if

you do have an Internet connection. That's kind of neat. B Tech is proud to be in the USA, which allows you to have the best available support for any issue that might arise. Betech only engineers envelops radio products. The brand focuses allows to have you the best available radio's accessories for the most features. Again, you can call

them contact them. They are in the United States, so they are in the same They're in one of our time zones instead of around the world in a completely other time zone that's ten or fifteen hours ahead of us. So this is a really cool radio. I'm looking forward to trying mine and it comes in at number ten today. Number nine is gonna be Better Safe Radio dot Com and I'm gonna tell you a little bit about them.

You can always save a seven percent discount on any of their radios with the coupon code of HR two to all seven. They're not a sponsor of this channel or this video, but they do give discounts to my viewers that I pass on to you guys, and they they're a great company to work with, a company in the USA. But the radios are made in China. All of their radios, unlike most of what we're going to talk about today, all of their radios come pre programmed.

He's got a code plug or programming software. He's got a code plug, a programming file that gets loaded in. All the radios with over nine hundred memory channels that includes ham Radio, GMRS, police and fire were available, no weather, emergency alert stations, all kinds of different channels and you can just scan through all those and see which ones work closest to you. All of the radios from Better

Safe Radio come program this way. He's got GMRS radios, he's got several levels of HAM radios, he's got LMR commercial grade radios right here. And he's got this BLO zero three three, two hundred and twenty million our USBC battery for all UV nine series walks on radios. His flagship is a UV nine pop x ray. It's on sale right now for one hundred and eighty five dollars, coming in at number nine. Again. We're going up in price, down in numbers. For whatever reason, I just wanted to

do that. Eight watt, nine hundred and ninety nine memory channels, pre programmed Superheterodyne UHFVHF emergency M two way radio, and seven band SHTF scanner. In other words, it has more and most of the UV nine series, well not most

of them. Some of the UV nine series radios have seven band receives, so it will receive and transmit on the two meters the one hundred and forty four mega hurts in the four hundred and forty megahertz band, but it will receive on seven other bands, including your eight hundred megahertz police and fire. So it's very possible that if your police and fire agency in your county or your town does not use digital, if they use analog, it's very possible that this radio will pick it up.

So that's an added bonus to that part of the programming code plug that comes with it. Again, you can save seven percent off of this price and whatever the price is today whenever you watch this video, HR two all seven at better Safe radio dot com, so check that out linked that will be in the description blow Also number eight is from Yazu. Now to date, so far everything we've talked about has been a Chinese made radio.

The bowfans, the Chinese made radio, the tyts of Chinese made walks, ons of Chinese made b Tech is technically made in China, although those radio the company is here, but the radios themselves are made in China. Yazu is a Japanese company. Yesu radios are typically made in Japan. This is a Yazu FT seventy d R five yt C four FM dual band one four four hundred and

thirty megahertz radio. It is a single band display monochrome screen which gets the price down a little bit more not a very large screen, but it will do JESU system Fusion. So if you're interested in some of the digital modes offered in ham radio today, we're going to talk about three of them in this video. YESU System Fusion, DMR,

and d Star. They don't talk to one another without some sort of external source like an open spot or something like that, but they are all popular mode to connect via repeater or hotspot to Internet connected devices and talk to people all over the world. If that's not your cup of tea, then you probably don't need anything like that, but it is a fun mode to talk on when you're just in the hobby of ham radio. This one comes in at one seventy five one seventy

four to ninety five from gigaparts right here. It has five watts of output power inside of a compact body. It has eleven hundred and five channel memory. Right here. It says just that wide band receive coverage from one hundred and eight megahertz up to five hundred and seventy nine dot nine ninety five megahertz, so it will receive

regular broadcasts FM radio. It will receive your two hundred and twenty megahertz commercial on hand bands, the MERS band, the GMRS band, FRS band, everything in between, so wide band received weather channels for severe alert warning, eighteen hundred mili amp hower battery equipped with an external jack for DC supper power supply and charge. Lots of great stuff. So if you're interested in getting started in system fusion, this could be a step in the right doction for you.

Only one hundred and seventy five dollars for this radio. Number seven is another radio from Yazoo. Now, I personally like this one better myself because I like Yazoo system fusion. It's fun to use, but I would rather have the two hundred and twenty MEGAHERTZPAN. This is the Yazoo VX six R. Now. This ft seven ft seven dr Delta Romeo is a dual band radio, but it looks very similar to this VX six R. The difference, of course, is the VX six R includes the two hundred and

twenty mega HURTSPAN. It is a triband radio two hundred and forty eight eighty nine at RNL Electronics at the time of this recording. The VX six R is an ultra rugged one to four to thirty megahertz FM handheld featuring wide receiver coverage, JIS seven submersibility, so it's got it's got some toughness to it, JESU exclusive Emergency Automatic Identification system and an ultrasimple keyword access to important functions.

There's a lot of accessories that are made by like digirig and a couple other companies so that you can put this radio onto an APRS or a win link system and do two meter or two twenty win late. Kind of cool, very rugged. I know a lot of guys that do field radio and field comms and MCom type stuff, and they use this radio because it is so rugged and versatile. One of my favorite radios. I've had one of these for a couple of years. I like the fact that it has the two hundred and

twenty megahertz band. That's their original reason I got it. But it is a very rugged and very good sounding radio. So again, if you're interested in triband or you're just interested in something that's better built, with a better receiver and a little bit heavier duty to go into the field, the Yazoo VX six R might be for you. Number six is we're back to a Chinese radio. The two Yazoo radios we just talked about are both Japanese radios.

This is the any Tone eight seven eight UV two plus and at Bridgecom you can get a free ninety seven dollars course with it. Again, this video is not sponsored by Bridgecom, but this is what they're advertised right now. Bridgecomb has a lot of training videos that they give away for free when you buy products from them. You can if you don't buy products from them, you can buy their training videos ninety seven dollars, But if you do buy one of any Tone radios from them, they

give you the training videos for free. Lots of people like their training videos because it goes through a very detailed process on how to use DMR and how to use the any Tone radios. One of my favorite radios is this Anytone. This is one that I carry with me on my pack pretty much every where I go. And you've heard me say that a couple times today about a couple of different radios. It depends on where I'm going. If I'm going to Galveston, I'm going on

a road trip, I'm going to my hunting lease. I can change up when i'm carrying where this one currently at the time of this recording, I have an everyday carry backpack by Everly Stock that I carry which is called a Switchblade backpack, and it has one radio pocket on the outside of it, and that's where I carry this eight to seven eight UV two plus. So generally speaking,

if I'm going somewhere that I take my backpack. This radio is with me USBC chargeable battery, three thousand memory channels, a nice beautiful color screen that you can see right there. Easily programmable from a computer, but also easily programmable from the keypad. Totally program everything from the keypad. I use mine on analog almost more than I do on DMR these days, although this one does DMR Digital Mobile Radio. It's one of the digital modes we have in Ham radio.

This is the only DMR radio we're going to talk about today, and it's my favorite DMR radio. This is one of the only DMR radios that was actually made for the Ham radio community. So this is just a great all around radio. I really like DMR. I don't use it for DMR much these days. I use it for analog more than anything. But this is one of my favorite radios because they do have USBC chargeable batteries now, and they're a big, a twenty eight hundred million power battery,

I believe is what it is. But it's just packed with features, packed with a good a great looking screen, really good. This is like the fifth or sixth iteration of dual band DMR radio to come from any tone. They're probably due for an upgrade, honestly, because this one's been out a while. But this is still just a great radio. Bluetooth aprs on analog, all kinds of features in that radio. Three hundred and thirty five dollars from Bridge Comm today check the link in the description below.

Pretty Much all of these radios you can use with a technician license, which gives you p on fifty megahertz and up. And one of the best ways to get your technician license is to go to hamradioprep dot com. Hamradio Prep is the sponsor of today's video. You can download their app for free. Grab your Android device or your iOS device search for Ham Radio Prep download their

app for free. Get started today on learning your Technician Class license if you're not licensed yet at all, or get your general or extra upgrade to your license from Ham Radio Prep. You can buy their service and save a twenty percent discount with the coupon code of Jason twenty off of all of their packages, and it open up opens up a wide range of informational and instructional videos that help you get to the next step in your amateur radio journey. So thank you HANM Radio Prep

for sponsoring this channel. The anytime we just spoke about was the last Chinese radio that we're going to talk about today. Everything we're going to talk about from here. Fourth is Japanese brand new to the market in twenty twenty four is the Icond fifty A. Actually it might have been twenty twenty three when this one came out. The fifty two to A plus, which we'll talk about here in seconds break twenty twenty four, So the ID fifty two came out a couple of years ago, then

the fifty came out after that. So I'm not sure if they're they're not the only ICOM's not the only company kind of go backwards on model numbers. It just kind of happens sometimes, no big deal. This one has a few less features than the ID fifty two, but

the price tags a lot smaller also as well. The original ID fifty two had micro USB charging, where this has USBC charging, so you get better charging capabilities with this ID fifty and it is it can do dual band d star dual band analog, holds a lot of channels USB C chargeable programming, and it has the ICOM

quality sound receive and transmit audio behind it. It uses the same battery as the ID fifty one and ID fifty two radios and as the IC seven oh five, so the USBC rechargeable batteries well is interchangeable between all those radios. So if you've already invested some money in the icon world, this could be a good choice for you. Three ninety nine today is the price of that radio. The next one up is this is one of my favorites, honestly.

This is the Yaesu FT five D. This is another one that I carry with me pretty much everywhere I go when I'm on a road trip. I did a video a while just not too long ago about my Maxipedition EEDC everyday carry pack that I had this radio in a lot of accessories to go along with it. This is the Yazu FT five DR. This is their flagship HT from Jesu. It has a beautiful full screen

color display on it. It has true APRS and analog, very robust, very feature packed APRS, messaging, APRS, beconing news bulletins, the whole nine yards. The menu system takes some getting used to, but this is a really, really good radio if you're into APRS with a big, huge color screen on it, and it has a touch screen on it as well. It is just a dual band radio one hundred and forty four and four hundred and forty megahertz, so you miss out on some of the features that

the two twenty radios have. But this is one of my favorite rates and again one that I carry with me many many times. The ICM ID fifty two A plus which was which is number three? This is number three. I com ID fifty two A plus. This radio was just announced like a month ago. I don't know anyone who actually has this in stock yet. I think it's on hro's website. It says right here it's out of stock on the gigabarts website, but I think it's because

they haven't got him yet. So the ID fifty two plus is a five watt handheld transceiver duel band with d Star. It has a little bit bigger display and a more color display than the ID fifty as a few more features that you can read about down here, a little bit more than the ID fifty, but it

is unlike the ID fifty two. This one is USBC chargeable because the original ID fifty two was micro USB and then the new ID fifty, the fifty two A Plus and the fifty two A plus Anniversary edition because it's sixty years of ICM this year, all have USB C charging capabilities. So this is one of the newest flagship radios from Icon. And again if you're an Icon fan and you like their ecosystem and you like how you can take a micro SD card download the worldwide

repeater directory from dstar info dot net. I think it is something like that, and you can load all the repeaters on your micro SD card, put it in this radio and the GPS and this radio tells you where you are and it'll give you all the all the repeaters near you, both d STARR and analog. Pretty cool feature of most of these Icon radios, so this is one. This is a good radio. Haven't had my hands on this one yet, but being that is from ICOM. It's

definitely getting added to the list today. Number three, six hundred and seventy nine dollars at the time of this recording. This is the first and only in last Kenwood we're going to talk about today. This is the brand new THHD seventy five. I just got one of these earlier this year. Very cool radio. We saw this at Daytonham mention of twenty twenty four earlier this year. This is a five watt tribeand radio. We're back to the two

twenty world. We've got two meters one to forty four megahertz two twenty one point twenty five meters and for forty seventy centime all packed into this brand new HT radio. It has a full color display. It's only a dual band display, so you can display two bands at one time even though it's a triband radio full color display.

It has a accessible tn C terminal node controller so that you can interface it via USB or Bluetooth to programs on your phone like APRS droid, or you can use it as a digipeter as an APRS digipeter, and if you have an external antenna, you can plug in this radio and use another radio to beacon your own APRS signal out through this radio that acts as a

digitpeter for APRS packets. Pretty cool stuff. This radio probably has the best and easiest menus to program from the front panel of most of these hts that we're going to talk about today. Just a great all around radio with a lot of extra features that are not seen in several of these radios, which includes full fledged APRS, full TNC that's accessible via Bluetooth or USB, Tribe, and d Star. This is Kenwood's flagship radio HT radio coming

in at six P ninety nine. Kind of pricey for a handheld, but with all the extra features it's got, it's definitely getting added to the list today as number two and the first one, Number one, the number one HT we're gonna talk about today, and the reason this number one is because of the price. Remember we're going in price. This is the Icon ID fifty two A plus sixtieth Anniversary Limited Edition. I'm not sure how limited

it is. They did a fiftieth anniversary of the I fifty one A and those things were around for a long long time, so I don't know, but you can see it's a silver color here. Really cool. If you're a big icon fanboy, this might be one for you because it's different. It comes in a black box rather than the cardboard box. A lot of people. If you go to sell a radio and you don't have a box, the radio is not worth as much. So the box

is actually quite important. This is a silver radio with a black display and a color screen on top of a black background. Very beautiful looking display. I'm planning on picking one of these up because I gotta have one of everything. As soon as Main Trading Company or Giga Parts get some of these in. You're gonna see a video about this on my channel. But this is a great radio. D Star USBC over one thousand memory channels. The icon carrying strap that we saw at the Huntsville

Hamfest apparently that makes it worth more money. I don't know. I don't know. This is the black box that it comes in, very nostalgic collector's edition if you're into that sort of thing. Ten twenty years from now, this will probably be worth a few more dollars than just the regular version of the ID fifty two. So that one comes in at number one today because it is the most expensive one. Seven hundred and twenty nine dollars at

the time of this recording. These are brand new. They were just released last month, started shipping from Icom last month in August of twenty twenty four, and that one is on the list today. So that is the number one radio because of price out of my fourteen top radios for twenty twenty four. Thanks for baron with me.

Let me know if you think I missed anything, let me know if if you think I should have added anything, or let me know what you think about the price tags on some of these later radios, because yeah, kind of high for a handheld dual band radio, but hey, you know what progress comes with more features, more options, more things we've been asking about, and just the price

of everything right now is high. So just you know, no one's forcing you to buy it, so don't buy it if you don't want to check the links in the description. Blow Thanks for watching today.