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Reviews For: Icom ID-4100A

Category: Transceivers: VHF/UHF+ Amateur Base/Mobile (non hand-held)

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Review Summary For : Icom ID-4100A
Reviews: 17MSRP: $459
Description:
UHF/VHF D-Star Transciever
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.icomamerica.com/en/products/amateur/mobile/id4100a/default.aspx
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00173.7
N1XQ Rating: 2018-05-29
Great radio - could easily be a lot better though Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I have also owned the ID-880H and this is a direct replacement for that radio.

The ID-4100A took everything that was good about the ID-880H and generally improved it. The basic radio is the same and the footprint of the base and head are exactly the same. So if you have the mounting bracket and head mount/magnet kit from an IC-880H they will fit the ID-4100A perfectly.

This radio vastly simplifies programing and day to day D-Star repeater use through simple menus that are easily accessable and selected. Which is a great improvement over the ID-880H.

The GPS also locks quickly and works well and is a welcome addition. So is the addition of a SD card slot which lets you load large lists of repeaters into memory. Put these two features together and you get the well implemented "Near Repeater" search that lets you easily scan for Digital and Analog repeaters near your GPS location. Great when traveling!

OK, here are the minuses - and they have been noted by others. Icom used to include the mobile bracket and head mount/magnet kit with the ID-880H. They are now very expensive options for the ID-4100A. No excuse except for price gouging.

Others have had trouble with the brightness of the display. I haven't found that to be a problem. But the layout of the display on the LCD is absolutely atrocious. During the most common operation (i.e. from memories) literally, and I am not exaggerating at all, 66% of the screen is blank space. Yet the text that is there is tiny and crammed in to other parts of the display. Just by moving some things around, they could have easily doubled the font sizes they used for the memory name and frequency readout. Icom needs to get the people who designed the IC-7300 display over to the mobile department and re-do this firmware. I won't hold my breath though.

If they fixed the display font sizes and layout I would give this radio 5 stars.
W4JTB Rating: 2018-05-26
Good Radio, Nickle and Dimed Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I’m giving this radio a 3 for a reason that some would not consider fair, but I’m posting regardless. Let me be clear, Radio alone, it’s easy a 4.5.

The price you see for the radio is not the price you actually pay and here’s why:

You have to purchase things like a cheap Bluetooth chip for almost $100.

You have to purchase an incredibly inexpensive mounting bracket for $40.

There are other parts you’ll need for different installations.

Icom is nickel and diming you to death with this one.

Now, on the the radio. If you don’t care about what’s above, then you will probably really like this radio a lot.

Super easy to get into DStar. This is as easy as it gets.

The design is very nice whether in your shack or in the vehicle.

Honestly, I picked up the face and held it almost like a phone to work with it.

Overall the radio is great, but Icom should learn not to take advantage of their customers.
ZL1CTS Rating: 2017-12-14
not compatible Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
OK I own an ID880 which is great for d-star, so thought the 4100 would be good too,
biggest issue is its not compatible with 90% of the repeaters in my country, so mobile its useless. it is not capable of correctly decoding repeaters running ircddb software, only G3 Icom software repeaters, so it thinks its an FM signal and gives digital noise...currently trying to resolve with my icom dealer....
also why sell a mobile rig with a remote head cable, but no radio mounts? its a mobile radio, doesnt make sense to me.
the 880 beats the 4100 hands down for sensitivity, the 4100 gets scratchy inplaces where the 880 would still give a perfect copy.. so over all very disapointed with what should have been a really good radio

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Earlier 3-star review posted by ZL1CTS on 2017-12-10

Just got a 4100 to replace the 880, and the display is just so hard to read, in VFO mode with just freq displayed its great, change to named memories with name shown, its tiny and most of the screen is left blank, a real waste of display real estate.. with the 880 and named memories its easy to read, the 4100, almost impossible in the vehicle... I am sure a firmware update to make it bigger or even scrolling would improve it greatly... otherwise its a nice radio
K2KN Rating: 2017-11-25
Excellent D-Star and FM Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I love this radio. I have had the ID-4100A for about 3 months. It is being used in my shack and not mobile. It replaces an IC-208H.

The ID-4100A has excellent selectivity and receive audio. I continually receive excellent audio reports from D-Star and FM contacts. Plenty of functions and easy to operate D-Star. I totally recommend getting the RT software and program cable, it makes programming both FM and especially D-Star easy and you will get more out of this radio. RT software will gladly help you program over the phone which can be a must for new users.

I have been licenced since 1968, this is the finest mobile 2 and 70 radio I have owned or used.
K1OYQ Rating: 2017-10-04
Terminal & Access Point Mode Issues Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I bought this radio to replace my ID-880H and use it for EMCOMMs in our local EOC on the DSTAR reflectors in either the Terminal or Access Point mode. This radio is a big improvement on the ID-880H. It has more features and the menu is much easier to use. However, the Terminal and Access Point modes do not work like a "DV Hotspot" as in a DV or DVAP Dongle or SharkRF. "You should be aware Terminal and Access Point modes only work using ICOM Callsign Routing. This means when you connect to another gateway through the internet and transmit, you will be heard there, but users who want to reply will need to know how to use Callsign Routing and capture your callsign (usually by pressing the radio's Callsign Capture button while you are still transmitting).  If they don't do that, you will not hear their reply.  The same applies to when you want to reply to a callsign routed call. This means Terminal and Access Point features do not support linked connections to reflectors. This fact is not always obvious from reading the sales literature."
I found out the hard way after purchasing one and trying to connect it up as a DV Hotspot. Here is ICOM response to my queries:
"The access point and terminal modes found in the ID-51A PLUS series and the ID-4100A are based around the JARL’s D-STAR protocol for callsign routing.  The functionality to connect to reflectors is based on third-party software, like dplus, that resides on most of the D-STAR repeaters.  While this is the functionality you desire, the limitation is that of their software to not recognize the ID-4100A as an access device to their network.  Once the third-party software providers incorporate the ID-4100A into their software, you should be able to have the capabilities you desire.  Until that date, the callsign routing functionality is all we can guarantee." ICOM offered to help me send it back to Gigaparts without paying the restocking fee, but I declined. Guess I'll have to wait for the third party solution to come along. The radio would be a 5+ if all the features worked as advertised.
KF5YTK Rating: 2017-09-01
Awesome Rig!!! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Purchased this little radio a month ago right when it came out and now that I have had time to play with it some I can honestly sit here and say it is GREAT... It has a nice receiver and I get terrific reports on my audio all of the time! If your looking for a nice compact dual band radio I highly suggest you pick one of these up!
K4EES Rating: 2017-06-06
Great Entry Level D-Star Transceiver Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I'll readily admit that this is my first 'real' radio. I've had my Technicians license for a couple of months and stepped up from the Baofeng.

Analog works very well as expected andI've had no trouble hitting local repeaters. There are many scanning modes (and SO much faster than the Baofeng). There are 1000 memories and they can be grouped into up to 26 banks. A GPS is built-in.

D-Star is a fairly complicated subject and the manuals are very little help and actually confuse the matter to us noobs. If you check out the videos and help guides for the ID-5100, you can get enough help to work your way though. I've only managed to have 2 contacts in D-Star, but the sound quality is outstanding, very clear.

Since I'm a newbie, I'll list a few things I see as issues: The manual is pretty weak for D-Star. I've tried for hours and cannot seen to link to a gateway or Reflector. I'm fairly sure I've got the settings right. The menu system is fairly complicated and takes sometime to get the hang of where things are stored. If you set a priority channel scan, you'll get a gap in your reception every 4-5 seconds. This was hard to find. The use of YOUR and MY Callsign must be much easier to understand in Japanese. Why not use Local and Remote or similar? Including a light sensor to adjust the screen intensity at night would be helpful. Programming cord is overly expensive. Where is the Mac software for programming?
Icom tried hard to cover the complexity of programming DV, but in reality, they've made parts a bit more difficult. There are 4 settings required to contact a reflector, for instance. You can select the settings from a menu, but to see how the radio is set, you have to search the main menu for an item called 'Callsign' to check the settings.

Scanning near repeaters (DV and FM) is very cool and helpful. Capturing callsigns from the contacts is easy. Despite the complaints about the screen and the mike cord, I really didn't have an issue with them. On my mew MFJ meter, I get 5, 20, and 50 Watts transmitted.

This seems to be a throttled back ID-5100. The screen is a bit smaller and it doesn't have a touch screen. The 4100 doesn't have dual transmitters.

Overall, I'm happy with it. It's a good performer and I'll eventually get the D-star stuff worked out. For the small difference in price, I probably would have given the 5100 a little more consideration.