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Show all reviews of the Yaesu VX-3R
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of the Yaesu VX-3R.
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KC7YCL
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Rating: 3/5
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Dec 26, 2008 17:53
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Quality control nonexistent, every one is different
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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I have had the pleasure of having 5 of these VX-3R radios side by side, and I noticed DRAMATIC variation in each receiver's sensitivity. Some of them could receive a distant repeater with full signal strength as indicated by the S meter. The worst performing unit was actually the most recently manufactured, and the same repeater barely moved the S meter 3 bars. Altogether, of the 5 radios, I considered two of them to be defective, and two of them to be good, with the others lying in between. But, unfortunately, one of the two good units had a mushy keypad, and one of the in between units had a knob that was so stiff I was worried I would break it trying to get it to unlock.
Additionally, the last good radio that I decided to keep for myself was the most deaf of the lot on the AM radio band, and it had a wobbly knob and a slightly mushy keypad - but at least it worked decent on the ham bands.
I ignore Yaesu's feature lists though, because they just give you the bare minimum to make it legal to advertise, but that's usually not necessarily enough to make their features useful. Yaesu spends big bucks packing features into their radios, but they don't bother to polish them to make sure they work well.
I have always known that Yaesu is the worst quality of the major amateur radio manufacturers, so I expected such unbelievably poor quality control.
I like the VX-3R because it's the best small radio on the market at the moment - it's a small market, no pun intended. If you can get a good one, you'll be amazed at what it can do, but based on my experienc, you should count on going through at least 5 of them before you find one that works well. Even then, you'll be disappointed if your expectations are high.
I haven't mentioned it because so many other people have, but all the battery covers are very loose on all the radios I tested. It doesn't bother me much, I just put a pad of double sided tape in the cover to firm it up against the battery, while leaving the wax paper on the side that faces the battery (so it won't stick to it).
One more gripe is that if I save an AM aircraft band frequency to memory, it changes all my FM ham band memories to AM also. Typical Yaesu bugs I guess.
So, at the end, you have bugs, quality control problems, and a difficult to use menu system with lots of nonsensical abbr's ("abbreviations"). It's hard to use, and hard to get around the menu system to get things done quickly. It has a lot of features, many of which do not work well, and it has many minor manufacturing defects in even the best units. But, despite all that, if you can get a good one, you'll probably like it.
My favorite thing about it is that it receives FM stereo of pretty good quality if you're using headphones. None of these micro radios have good audio out the speaker. I can't hear this one at all when I'm walking near a busy road with car noise, so I use headphones most of the time. It's compact and discreet, and I don't look like an outdoorsman, a gadget guy, a secret agent, a cop, or a soldier, when I'm in city slicker mode.
The stock antenna is decent for it's size, and I haven't found another antenna that works better that's any smaller on the ham bands. The Maldol MH-209SMA is smaller, and it works better outside the ham bands, but the stock antenna is usually better for most things, and you get it for free with the radio.
I haven't tried Icom's IC-P7A, but as I understand the reviews for that radio, the quality is better all around, and longer battery life, but it lacks programmable DTMF tones, and it has worse speaker audio. I might try one eventually, especially since I usually use headphones anyway.
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