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Reviews For: Yaesu FT-2DR

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

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Review Summary For : Yaesu FT-2DR
Reviews: 46MSRP: 640
Description:
The FT2DR is the latest Yaesu System Fusion handheld with a touchscreen and
dual band digital capability.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.yaesu.com/indexVS.cfm?cmd=DisplayProducts&ProdCatID=249&encProdID=4A66D869E574453F343581B53E9FAB40
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00463.7
KD2TYT Rating: 2021-05-25
This radio can pretty much do it all. Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
Its a little quirky but once you get used to it you realize it can pretty much do it all.

The biggest shortfall is the User Interface which is not organized intuitively. After a coupe of weeks you learn to live with it, memorize where you need to get to and how to get there and you are off to the races.

Otherwise it i a great radio. The LCD is very good, quite visible indoors and out. Receive is great, transmit is too. Programming through the SD card is awesome, no cables or other junk needed.

Battery life is excellent considering how much it can do, You can scan multiple bands while listening to broadcast radio.

Digital is a neat feature too and wires seems to be the runner up to DMR in popularity these days, plenty of activity available with multiple repeaters near my home.

N2HAM Rating: 2020-06-26
Beautiful Radio! Easy to use! Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
Great radio! Love the large screen, easy to program and the sound its good. Love the scope feature and fusion with Wires X! I have the FT3D also and I wouldn't sell either!
VE6BGM Rating: 2020-06-22
No Problem with assigning mode to frequency. Time Owned: more than 12 months.
As usual will not give most radios a 4/5 largely because I don't know what is an ideal radio. But I don't mind not being able to assign Digital mode to a frequency. Some repeaters are dual mode so I just set radio to Auto Mode and away I go. Radio will switch to C4FM or FM depending on mode that is transmitting. Can easily change modes by menu or DX. Also love 1 D for volume and 400 mobile.
VE2TBC Rating: 2020-06-21
Great quality but I hate it ... again Time Owned: more than 12 months.
This review is almost identical to the one I made about the FTM-100D because it shares the same pros and cons. So why re-write...

This radio is definitely a quality radio. The audio, the construction, the screen, the APRS works great, the form factor, touch screen, visibility under the sun etc....

But I hate the radio. There is way to much manipulation and button usage due to a poor decision made by the sofware interface programmers.

I do not know who is the unexperience person who decided that the mode (FM or C4FM) cannot be stored in memory.

When you choose FM, whole radio and therefore all memories are in the FM mode. If you decide to chose DN or VW, the complete memory bank is now in this mode.

So the mode is global, not per repeater or memory slot. Imagine that you are using a mix of analog and digital repeaters in memory. Every time you select a repeater of a different mode, you have to press the mode change button on average 3 times to configure to the correct mode.

I purchased the FT-100D and it it the same. I regret both purchases. I will not buy the FTM-400XDR for that reason. If the new FTM-300DR is the same, I will not buy.

The FT-70D and FTM-7250 do record the mode in memory and that excellent. Try to figure why radios from the same company operate differently. Some made by Yeasu some made by Vertex???

73 VE2TBC
KE7EZJ Rating: 2020-05-03
distorted audio Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
had for 1 week and audio got distorted or off frequency. when working it worked great. i haven't had good luck with yeasu radio's. i have had great luck with kenwood ts 480 hx ans sat. also the d 710
KD5TXX Rating: 2019-08-09
Nice rig Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Well, I’ve had this and used it a while so I feel I can review it now. I have owned and used many HTs, from different companies and this is replacing my VX7r. I’ll also compare it to the TH d72a. It is a very well built and solid radio. I bought this new for under $300. As far as APRS, the GPS connects fast. And I mean in 10 seconds or less usually. With the bigger screen, it’s a lot easier to see. The 72a does have an advantage in the fact that packets don’t make my conversations on the A band cut in and out....but other than that, I prefer this radio. It is by FAR the easiest to program by hand in the field. The stock antenna isn’t that bad either. The battery last all day even with APRS running. It’s a great HT that I have been carrying and using for a while now and I am still learning all of the things that it can do.
SQ9MT Rating: 2019-07-25
The radio was not bad but it broke down after 2 y and 3 weeks Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Cool radio can be said, but in the category it was once. Unfortunately, it broke down (completely) after 2 years and 3 weeks.
Currently, the YAESU company promises to repair it. I hope it will happen. I was a little disappointed, I thought that these devices are more reliable. I want to note that the seller gave the radio a warranty of only 2 years, and 3 weeks later the radio is damaged itself? A bit strange.
KC2FYA Rating: 2019-03-15
Great after a year! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
The FT-2DR has a lot to offer and it is relatively easy to program by hand once you get used to the menu layout and logic. The touchscreen is not too sensitive and the dot matrix display is good. The first negative I wish to mention is that the radio is supplied with a very slow wall charger. I have sine purchased a rapid charger set to limit downtime. I wish a strap was supplied too.

The audio receive quality is good, excellent on C4FM Digital. It is crisp sounding even on analog communications and it is loud enough for outdoor use. The radio has a good feel and is rugged. My TX audio reports from other stations has been excellent with the adjustable Mic-Gain. I elected to purchase a Diamond 3 Db Gain antenna which works great on both 144/440. The only thing is that the radio is unbalanced and could fall over very easily if I am careless.

The battery is good enough to last all day, especially on the 100 MW or Half watt setting. I have used it for race communications and it performs very nicely. I did opt to rig a screen protector film for it to not damage the screen. the contrast is adjustable to my preference.

Overall this is a good rig for C4FM Fusion Digital & Analog true dual band radio. As a flag ship priced radio, a quick charger and strap should be supplied. Now that the radio is under $300.00 it should be considered. The FT-70DR is about a third less in cost and has some drawbacks.

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Earlier 4-star review posted by WX2WMU on 2018-05-08

I decided to upgrade from my FT-70DR and I am impressed with the radio. First I want to mention the battery life which is excellent. I do not like the slow charger it is supplied with. It takes the Nine or more hours to charge a depleted battery as the manual specifies.

The Audio on the speaker is excellent. Very loud and crisp. I also like the mic gain setting from 0-9 which I received excellent reports on. Programming by hand is easy once I became familiar with the "basic" settings. I customized a screen protector for my screen which works well.

Performance on analog and C4FM is also great. I use a Diamond SRH77CA 144/440 gain antenna in place of the stock rubber duck which yields me accessing repeaters further out. The only thing I notice with the gain antenna on the radio is that the radio wobbles a lot in a standing position which makes it subject to falls if I am not careful.

Overall this radio is a good buy, but a rapid charger should be in the package with a flagship HT.
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Earlier 4-star review posted by WX2WMU on 2018-03-31

To add to my earlier post, I am disappointed that only a slow charger comes with the radio which takes up to nine hours to fully charge! Other than that, the radio is working out well with the Diamond Gain SRH77CA HT Antenna.

This radio is worth the sale price I paid for it.

K7LTF Rating: 2019-02-18
Good radio - Display could have been improved before launch ? Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I feel the radio is a good radio overall. The interface I felt was intuitive once you read the manual a bit. The audio sounds very good, I also have an FT70DR, and that sounds good too.

Doing the Wires X side of things is a lot easier with this radio then the 70dr. Its nice the mics between the 70dr and this radio are intercchangable.

What I DON'T like and I think is a gripe of many or most other people that have bought the radio is the display, I think there is plenty of backlight but not enough contrast by far. I can read it with my CCTV, that is basically an electroic magnifier , for the visually imparied - very clearly - but thats way to much money for sometrhing *the radio* that could have been retified in the development process. If they could have made the display as legible as lets say the ID-51A, the lack of not having a color- would be non issue for me.

The touch screen is not as sensitive as an ipod, but for what it was designed to do , it works well.

I have not used the GPS fully since I mostly use a D74A for ht GPS work, but it seemed to lock on pretty quickly and obtain a lock.

All and all in general a good radio solid build - but not perfect, largely due to the display not being very legible overall.
YO9IRF Rating: 2019-02-06
Half-baked Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I own the FT2D and a good set of accessories for it, including the camera mic. I also set up a small home iGate just because I got the FT2D.

Yaesu already advertises all the positive points about this radio, so I will only mention the negative ones. First of all, it won't display the saved memory's name (alpha tag), only the frequency. To be able to see it you have to go to single receive mode. Any cheap chinese handheld can do this, I wouldn't even have expected Yaesu to miss this especially on a high-end model.

Another issue is when saving a repeater to memory, it doesn't save the mode. So not only you can't even see what repeater you're on, but you need to remember if it's a digital or analogue repeater just by looking at the frequency on the screen. Feels like the dark ages of handhelds, when people had a label with repeater frequencies attached to the back of the radio !

The screen is terrible. It's a very washed monochrome (dark grey / light grey) touchscreen with resistive digitizer, like they used in the 90s. The contrast is very low and you it needs hard presses. This was launched at the same time that 7" screen full color capacitive touchscreen tablets were selling for about 1/10th of what the FT2D was. Absolute fail.

User interface in general is awful, like with any Yaesu handheld. Everything is counterintuitive and relies a lot on you remembering where things are. It uses the PTT as an "OK" button in some contexts, essential functions are hidden in menus, abbreviations don't make sense etc. They managed to make it so complicated and hard to use that there is even a separate manual just for APRS use.

Charging takes forever unless you buy the separate rapid charging cradle, the stock antenna is not great, the belt clip is attached to the battery and not to the radio body etc. Overall, expensive and poorly executed.