Baofeng UV-5G Plus Review

I have never owned a Baofeng radio but I am impressed with this GMRS model. If you ask any GMRS or Amateur Radio operator today if they have a Baofeng radio, the answer is probably yes, and why not for between $30-$100 depending on your accessories. Now, I don't typically review HT radios but Radioddity sent me this radio in exchange for a product review for them, so I want to share with you my thoughts on this new handheld GMRS radio.

UV-5G plus brings you 5w/3w/0.5w of power(H/M/L), 10.6oz weight, up to 969 customizable GMRS/GMRS repeater/UHF/VHF channels, a new frequency copy feature, an extended battery capacity from 1500mAh to 2500mAh, complete with a USB-C port. It also features a large 1.9″ color display, and two high-gain antennas for improved reception. It allows you to pre-set numerous repeaters with varying split tones, facilitating efficient use across multiple cities/towns, it supports Chirp [Choose Model: UV-5G Plus], Seamless Frequency Copy: Simplify your programming process with the frequency copy feature, allowing for effortless cloning of frequency configurations from one UV5x radio to another.

Some of you might own the original Father/Mother radio the Baofeng UV-5R. Well… I want to draw some comparisons with you in terms of this new GMRS radio compared to the original UV-5R.

When it comes to comparing the size of this radio the UV-5G Plus is quite a bit larger. This size leads me to believe there are more updated internal components involved in the making of this radio compared to the older UV-5R model. The UV-5G Plus radio is also not only longer, but thicker with the included original battery. It has a nice feel in your hand when holding it. The buttons on the front of the radio are similar to the older UV-5R with some slight color changes on some of the buttons. The top of the radio has a neat flashlight with an SOS strobe (activated by the orange button on the left side of the body of the radio).

Looking at the screen differences between both radios you will notice a significant screen size difference on the UV-5G Plus being larger/wider than the original UV-5R. The UV-5G Plus's screen is a color screen that shows up reasonably well in non-direct sunlight outside, compared to a monochrome screen on the original UV-5R. The text size on the UV-5G Plus is a thin white font type with a royal blue screen background. One disappointing factor with the screen color is when you go to the menu settings you will notice that the menu text is in Red and on a royal blue background and it becomes impossible to see or change the items when you are outside in direct sunlight. As my mom would say, “Red and Royal Blue don't match”.

To start off with the legal stuff: The UV-5G Plus has a very nice imprinted sticker with an FCC ID number on the inside of the radio back plate and it appears that a tough and thorough FCC testing process was done to check on spurious emissions, but I wasn't there, so don't take my word for it.

There is a cover on the left side of the radio for an external speaker mic to plug into the radio. This is one feature on the radio that I had an issue with. When you open the cover to attach the ext. speaker mic the cover for the mic plug just bends over your speaker mic cord. You can't remove the cover when you plug in the mic. It's somewhat annoying.

The radio has a nice loud volume from the internal speaker. The volume nob could be a little bit tighter when dialing in your volume setting. My radio appeared to have a loose volume knob when adjusting the volume. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

Using this radio locally with a few GMRS repeaters I compared my signal receive capabilities with the Motorola APX 7000 and found that this radio responded quicker to transmissions than my Motorola did, to my surprise. Also, on Transmission I had no problem hitting the GMRS repeater in Boca Raton from down in Davie on 5 watts with their stock antenna (smaller 7' one). The radio does come with two antennas. A 7'whip as well as a 20' whip.

The Radioddity Baofeng UV-5G Plus operates on High power – 5-7 watts, Medium power – 3-5 watts, and Low power -0.5-2 watts.

The radio comes preprogrammed out of the box with all the GMRS channels, and weather channels right out of the box, but if want to add repeater CTC tones to the repeater channels you can use the front keypad to do that or use the CHIRP software. However, if you want to use Channel Names for your channels you will need to use the CHIRP software to do at. The software is free to download from Baofeng website.

I like the feel of this radio and the sound quality coming out of this radio. A close friend did put the radio on a scope and found that it had very little spurious emission coming out of the GMRS bands, which is impressive for this $30.00 Chinese radio. What are spurious emissions you ask? Spurious emissions are emissions that are outside the RF carrier when you transmit with the radio. According to the ligature The Baofeng UV-5G Plus has a conducted spurious emission of ≤-57dB@12.5KHz.

The battery life is again impressive but is also dependent on how much you transmit. The UV-5G Plus does come with a bigger battery at 2500 MAh compared to the lesser UV-5R at 1800 MAh.

There is a new button on the front right side (a Green button) of the radio. When you're in VFO mode and you quickly tap it you will switch from UHF to VHF and vice versa. If you hold down the button the radio goes into a “One-touch Frequency Search” and it will find the strongest local signal, within the band, along with the corresponding frequency and CTC or DCS code. This is pretty neat! So if your friend is operating on a frequency and tone and he/she does not know what they are, this radio will tell you.

Also, there is a stopwatch function/display within this radio, which I am not sure what the purpose is along with an FM radio tuner so you can listen to your favorite local FM channel on your new Baofeng UV-G Plus GMRS Handheld. Hmmm!!!

Baofeng is coming out with newer models frequently, just look on Amazon and their quality appears to be getting better and better with each radio that's produced. The price points are starting to creep up a bit but are still very reasonable for a Chinese-built GMRS radio for the beginner or advanced user. Thank you for taking the time to read my review.