Manager


Manager - NA4M
Manager Notes

Reviews For: KYDERA KYD DM-880 DMR Handheld

Category: Transceivers: VHF/UHF+ Amateur Hand-held

eMail Subscription

Registered users are allowed to subscribe to specific review topics and receive eMail notifications when new reviews are posted.
Review Summary For : KYDERA KYD DM-880 DMR Handheld
Reviews: 3MSRP: 200
Description:
DMR Handheld Transceiver from China New Century Communication Electronics Co.,Ltd.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.century-comm.com/Proucts01.asp?id=578
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0033
ON4NL Rating: 2016-08-31
Kydera DM-800 Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I purchased a DM-800 begin 2016, just a few weeks before I read these reviews. You can imaging that I was a bit worried, however USD130.00 isn't a disaster. Right the transceiver isn't CE approved, FCC I don't care much as it is an issue for the USA. After 8 months operating it daily, digital and Analog mode, repeater work. I had none of the issues what were listed before. The only difficulty is the programming that is a bit different from other DMR Transceivers, but after some time you get used to it. I found it very good value for money. I own a Hytera PD-685G to, and found no differences in performance after 8 months in use.
N2PLR Rating: 2015-03-04
Good radio for the monry Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
OK the radio is cheap. Just what I was looking for to try DMR. Face it Motorola is alot of money to spend on something new. About the radio it has a nice solid feel. 3000ma battery buil in FM radio plenty of memory for systems and analog channels. It does 25khz in analog which is nice. Programming is a bit different but not impossible, I had problems with the drivers I had to reinstall them if I shut the computer down. That was my main complaint. There were some quirks but for the cost of half of a used Motorola I can live with it. Audio is good speaker is loud display is bright and can be adjusted and can turn off after a period. Negatives were some of the quirks mentioned. On the plus side Price,25khz on analog oh and the FM radio. A perfect radio for myself. I did need help programming the radio just because I never did a DMR radio before but not an issue now that I know how. Good luck and ttyl on tac-310. N3DUG
VA2OOK Rating: 2014-05-15
Junk! Not 100% compatible with the DMR standard Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
Buyer beware!

Looking for a cheaper alternative to Mororola's DMR radios we found the KYD DM-880 DMR handhelds and we decided to give them a try. We got three handhelds back in October 2013 for testing purposes and after 7 months of testing, 2 firmware and 1 software upgrades this is our conclusion: DO NOT BUY!

And here's why:

01. Programing software. Poorly written, buggy and in Chinglish (80% Mandarin + 20% Bad English). Initial version required MS Excel installed on the machine in order to work. The user interface is not intuitive and chaotic.

02. Poor USB connectivity and driver issues

03. Very high error rates observed on C-Bridged Motorola repeaters (poor chipset design or implementation?)

04. Unreliable technical support (non-responsive and difficult, non-technical sales people who
translate to Mandarin for the engineering team)

05. Constant drop-outs on TX (completely useless for repeater QSO). Any transmission longer than 5 seconds experienced drop-outs)

06. Master/Slave not supported (no 1-slot simplex)

07. Unreliable volume control knob: too light, extremely easy to turn the volume all the way down, non-linear response

08. Unreliable channel knob: extremely “jumpy”, almost impossible to use, jumps back and forth between 2 channels

09. Faulty accessory connector (can't use external speaker microphone)

10. Not FCC / IC approved

If you're looking for a cheap DMR handheld, THIS RADIO IS NOT THE SOLUTION.

These radios were supposed to offer a less expensive way for hams to join the expanding DMR community but have failed miserably due to their incompatibility with the existing DMR repeaters.