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Reviews For: Yaesu VX-3R

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

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Review Summary For : Yaesu VX-3R
Reviews: 139MSRP: 199
Description:
A micro-sized dual band entry from vertex/standard...With 1.5 watts output on 2 meters, and 1 watt on 440... With 13.8 vdc power jumps to 3 watts on 144, and 2 on 440...Has wide band rx, and NEW ferrite bar antenna for AM broadcasts... 1000 ma/1 amp lithium -ion battery
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.yaesu.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
121394.3
WY7CDL Rating: 2009-10-05
Great Little Radio Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
This is a great little radio for local simplex or if you are close to a repeater. I use mine primarily for crossband repeat with my Yaesu 8900R quad band mobile. Awesome for when you are out of vehicle but dont want to loose touch. I also really enjoy the FM reception great for when I am at work and away from a normal fm radio. Only complaint I have is the stock duck is a dummy load. Toss it and add a Diamond SRH-519 and you have yourself a very capable TINY radio. To ease programming I suggest ttl2usb.com cables and G4HFQ's Programming software, makes life SO much easier especially with 50 plus repeaters programmed in...
KC7SBQ Rating: 2009-09-26
VX-3R is weak for my area Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I have had some time to try this radio and I find it has too many features which leads to too many compromises. The radio is really deaf to the RF environment around it, which is good and bad. No intermod, but it has a hard time detecting the frequencies programed into it. I find this radio very marginal, which suprises me since I have always had such good results from Yaesu. I do have to hand it one thing, when it finally detects a radiowave, it has good audio. The AM/FM receive feature should have been left off in favor of better sensitivity on the amateur bands. The AM/FM is useless, and takes up valuable PC board space, unless you have a radio station right next door. Let me be fair though, I am located in an area where the average radio station is 10-20 miles away and repeaters are located 5-10 miles away. It does receive Radio Havana Cuba on 6060 Khz on shortwave though, but one can only listen to the commie propaganda so long. I can usually reach the VHF repeaters in my area. I Have never reached a 70 cm repeater yet. I guess they are too far away for the wattage. Maybe an aftermarket antenna will help. This radio is probably good in downtown Los Angeles or other areas where there would be a high repeater density. In Metroplitan Utah it is only a marginal radio. It seems to be rugged enough.

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Earlier 3-star review posted by KC7SBQ on 2009-09-10

Yaesu really did a poor job writing the manual for the VX3R. The provblem is that the radio is so feature packed they needed better technical writing skills to write the manual. Otherwise the radio seems solid.
AB6PG Rating: 2009-09-03
Good all Around radio Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Purchased a couple for my son and I. Very use all around radio. Kind of like a pocket knife. good for walks if you live near repeaters. The FM radio works well as do the other features.
KF5BKW Rating: 2009-07-31
Very, Very, useful Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This is a very good, durable little radio. I am only 11 years old, and i took it to Boy Scout camp with me. It withstood a rainstorm when our tarp leaked. Very useful in communicating with the other hams in our troop, both at camp and on the way there. It is very durable and does very well for 1.5 watts.
KE7AAS Rating: 2009-07-31
I liked it just fine Time Owned: more than 12 months.
worked ok for me for over a year. Used around the house to monitor\chat on my repeater. I only sold it because I have way too many HT's and wanted other toys. Never a problem, would run for days on low power.
N0TU Rating: 2009-07-30
Water Damage = NO WARRANTY Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I must say I'm not a heavy user of VHF HTs but I found this radio hard to use. The manual was about as intuitive as the radio's menu or in other words not user friendly. But the big dissatisfaction for me was after about 4-months of use I realized on 2m RX wasn't hearing very well. So I did a hard reset according to manual but still no joy! I sent back to Yaesu they claimed it was water damaged! Hence no warranty, no fix and no radio! They may be within there rights but I've never used the radio in a damp environment, or consciously got it wet or left it out in the weather! Go figure? I'm in shock? Oh well. Anyone need VX3r for parts or a door stop? Moral: Keep your VX3r in plastic bag!
W0GTR Rating: 2009-07-22
Versatile, delicate, buggy Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Have had the VX-3R for over a year. Fits in the inner pocket on many pairs of jeans. Great to take along on air travel. Makes good repeater contacts in urban areas.

Broadcast reception has been good for me. Has an option to select earphones as antenna. I bought a Comet dual-band whip but rarely use it.

For shortwave, I plug in an adapter (SMA male to SO 238, connected by thin coax to avoid stressing the radio chassis) and hook up a random wire antenna or dipole fed with cheap coax. Beats SWL radios in the same price range having only a telescoping antenna. AM only though.

Main gripe: not mil-spec. I'm clumsy, and have broken lots of cell phones. This thing has hit the deck at least three times. I'm just crossing my fingers.

Other problem is the buggy firmware. It's locked up on me several times trying to save an FM broadcast station into memory. Had to remove battery to turn off. And recently I had to do a "hard reset," erasing everything, to make it stop displaying a memory channel alias, which appeared suddenly on the band scanning screen (instead of scan frequency as expected).

With these exceptions, it's been reliable. Battery life is reasonable for having basically a cell phone battery.

Like many others, the user interface is poor. Keys are big enough to press, but poorly marked with terse, meaningless abbreviations.

For example, to delete a memory channel, you must press in sequence the "ARTS" key, which has a squiggle graphic resembling two electrons orbiting a nucleus. Wacky.

The menu system is pretty good, but cramped by the tiny LCD. Just memorize the keypress sequences to do common tasks, or carry the manual with you.

All in all, a good ultra-compact general-coverage receiver for light duty use, with a dual-band transmitter thrown in as a bonus. A good match for me because I do more listening than talking, more carrying than listening.

While the VX-3R doesn't do anything particularly well... it sure does a lot!
IZ0PXT Rating: 2009-07-07
SUPER PERFORMER ! Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
The Yaesu VX 3 is a great perfomer ! Everyday I like more, small and portable everywhere with a good battery autonomy, i used it also in the car with the stock antenna with good results,the feature that I like more is the CW TRAINER !

73 DE IZ0PXT Simon
VA2MBA Rating: 2009-07-06
LE couteau suisse Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
J'ai acheté 1 autre baterie sur ebay 6$ que je traine toujours dans mes poches.

Je traine toujours sur moi se petit apareil. La construction est plus fragile que la moyenne mais je l ai échapé a quelques reprise et il n y a pas encore eu de conséquense, l apareil fonctionne encore a merveille.

J'aime :
-Très petit
-facilité des menus
-beaucoup de fonctions paramétrables
-la vitesse de recharge (2 heures)
-l'indicateur lumineux de recharge et de charge complète
-la lamp led intégré
-gmrs frs :)

J'aime moins
-pas waterproof
-le couvercle de pile lousse
N1MIE Rating: 2009-07-06
Great Little Radio Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I love my VX-3R. I purchased this as a replacement for my VX-2R. I love it for it's small size. The only down side is the lack of attachment device. But it will easily slip in a pocket.