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Reviews For: wouxun KG-689

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

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Review Summary For : wouxun KG-689
Reviews: 13MSRP: <70 dollar with shipping
Description:
china two way ham radio
Product is in production
More Info: http://
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00133.9
OH1HAQ Rating: 2011-05-27
1750Hz toneburst is there Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Just FYI:

Contrary to popular belief, this radio has got a 1750Hz toneburst.

Press PTT, keeping it pressed press the * (star) button. This "feature" is completely undocumented, but it works.
EP3MJ Rating: 2011-04-02
Peace of junk! Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
poor product quality.
terrible receiver.


the receiver has a very bad sensitivity.

never try!
VE3TMT Rating: 2010-08-07
KG-679 VHF HT Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Ordered one from Hong Kong with the waterproof speaker/mic and arrived in one week for a total of $90 CAD. I was looking for a cheap HT to carry around the hamfests or for use at local club events and monitoring the local repeater. I haven't been on VHF bands in a while and didn't want to sink a lot of money to get back on. The HT is rugged, and looks solid. Belt clip nice and strong, it will not fall off and can not easily be pulled off. Both TX and RX audio are good. For less than $100, including shipping you can't go wrong. I give it a 4/5 because without the programming cable the memories are a bugger to program, and the manual could be better, but that I expected. All in all a nice little handheld. May pick up the dual band model soon.

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Earlier 4-star review posted by VE3TMT on 2010-08-07

Ordered one from Hong Kong with the waterproof speaker/mic and arrived in one week for a total of $90 CAD. I was looking for a cheap HT to carry around the hamfests or for use at local club events and monitoring the local repeater. I haven't been on VHF bands in a while and didn't want to sink a lot of money to get back on. The HT is rugged, and looks solid. Belt clip nice and strong, it will not fall off and can not easily be pulled off. Both TX and RX audio are good. For less than $100, including shipping you can't go wrong. I give it a 4/5 because without the programming cable the memories are a bugger to program, and the manual could be better, but that I expected. All in all a nice little handheld. May pick up the dual band model soon.
WM9V Rating: 2010-02-14
read before buying Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Please read before purchasing
You may have seen this product advertised on Ebay as a dual band handie talkie. This product is not a dual band walkie talkie.
The KG 689 is a UHF only dual watch or dual receive UHF only walkie talkie; contrary to the manufacturers website. If you desire a VHF walkie talkie then you must order the KG679 VHF model.
The Ebay vendor I dealt with ignored my follow up emails criticizing his ad.
The box cover graphics purports this product specs as being a dual frequency transceiver. Needless to say , Chinese made products now draw the brunt of
jokes about cheap foreign made products
The quality of the product is good ;it has an ISO 9000 sticker in the back cover
and works reliably.
Unfortunately, like so many products from China ,the cost of shipping (50 dollars)is a significant factor in price shopping.
Technically the product is a jobsite radio useable for GMRS and amateur use.
The quality of the product is good, but again, do not buy this radio if you are purchasing an inexpensive dual band handie talkie. The two model numbers exist because they are VHF and UHF only models.
Hopefully this should clear up the deceptive advertising associated with this manufacturer and domestic resellers/importers of Chinese made communications products.
Consulting the manufacture website will only confuse you more (Confucious?) because their pages clearly list this as a uhf/vhf transceiver in one package. Yaesu owners manuals are not available for download on their website so maybe the Chicoms are an improvement.
VA7CRH Rating: 2009-12-27
Inexpensive, software needs work Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I got the KG-689 400-470 MHz (UHF) version to use primarily as an inexpensive GMRS radio on the 8 frequencies allocated. At 4 watts it works at about a 16 block radius for GMRS, and would go farther line-of-sight. It also works very well as a ham-band UHF transceiver and as a scanner for police and fire frequencies. With 128 channels, there's more than enough to fill in in our area.

Why the 4 out of 5? Well, the docs are in mangled English, obviously done by someone with it as a second language. As referred to in the last review, it took me awhile to discover that the GMRS frequencies needed to be entered into memory twice (they are simplex!), once for receive and the other for transmit. Don't know of another tranceiver where you have to do that - particularly since one also can set the rig for proper offset in software. Further, the manual wasn't clear this had to be done this way. I haven't used the software, but recommend it.

This is a dual-watch unit on the display.

Would have like to see some other features but at the price cannot complain. The shipping from a company in Hong Kong was seamless and very inexpensive.

Wouxun has winners in these nifty handhelds - I also have a KG-UVD1P dual watch 2M / 220MHz unit. As with the KG-689, in North America one has to be careful not to TX out of ham band, but software makes it easy to avoid as you simply don't program the TX side of the rig.

This would be a "5" save for the very awkward manual programming from the front panel. The manual desparately needs a workover. But all in all very good value for the money.

Icom, Kenwood, Yaesu, and Alinco will be getting a run for their money in the years ahead as Chinese companies mature.
KB1LUO Rating: 2009-11-17
GOOD BUY!! Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
This little ht has a few cons but has far more pros! Programming it is strange having to program both receive and transmit frequencies when it has a built in offset. Programming from the front keys is difficult. I highly recommend the cable and software.
One of the quirky things that I thought at first was the fm radio feature. I find myself using this feature more and more but you can't see what frequency you are tuned to as the display simply says radio.
This little ht performs very well and I receive very good reports from it. The accessories are very inexpensive. I bought a Nagoya ¼ wave antenna, external microphone and extra battery pack which all came to a little over $100 US dollars from www.409shop.com.
I would give it a 4.5 if there was that option but for the value and the way it talks the few cons really do not matter so I will give it a 5. I plan on purchasing the KG UVD1 dual band at a later date.
G3YVY Rating: 2009-10-09
Excellent cheap radio Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Please ignore the negative comments in my previous review. I've managed to find different software for this handheld which includes channel scanning. This is the link.
http://www.chinatwowayradios.com/Users-Guide-Downloads.html.
The channel scanning software for the KG-689 is "KG-689E-P"
So I can now give it a rating of 5

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Earlier 4-star review posted by G3YVY on 2009-10-09

I am impressed with this little handheld transceiver.It appears to be quite well made.
I sent for the USB prgramming cable (inc software) as I did not fancy programming the 128 memory channels by hand. The software instructs you to allocate the "Prolific USB driver" to Com 1. This did not work in my case as the software would not talk to the radio. I'm sure this is because my serial port is already com 1. Assigning the USB driver to Com2/3/4/5 did not work either. Upon contacting the prog. cable supplier in Hong Kong they gave me a link for another XP USB driver which worked ok & assigned the driver to Com 4.
When you program the Rx frquencies to a channel and then click on the TX box, it puts the same frequency in the box, which saves typing.
These are the links I was sent for the updated drivers.
Vista - http://www.radiogearpro.com/download/vista-prolific-chip-driver-for-serial-adapters.zip
Windows XP etc - http://www.radiogearpro.com/download/windowsprolificdrivers.zip
The only downside I have found with this radio is that I cannot work out how to scan the channels I have programmed. The manual says "by software only" but there does not seem to be provision in the supplied software to do this function. I have emailed Wouxon but as yet have received no reply on channel scanning.
I think channel scanning should have been a basic function of this radio which is why I can only give it 4 out of 5. However I would like to know if anybody else who has this radio has managed to enable channel scanning. It could be I'm just not clever enough.
KC5BBD Rating: 2009-05-31
good radio Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Good radio however the charger malfunctioned in 2 weeks and the battery eliminator went out a week after that..... But would buy again... works fine with aa battery case and rechargeables
KC2PLJ Rating: 2009-05-21
Very Good For the Money Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Picked up this cheap little rig and have been amazed with it's performance. It's nice to throw in the glove box in the car and with the low cost it's ok to lose. I have several of these rice boxes and have been impressed. They are not all that bad for what you pay for them.
M6MOF Rating: 2009-04-04
Amazing value Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I bought this 2m handy, (also available on 70cms), on the back of the other reviews on this site. I've given the radio a 5 because it is such good quality for the price. It's quite small and weighs only 250 grams.

As in the other reviews it has dual receive, not quite like an FT8800/8900, but handy all the same, 3 different on-screen colours which are nice features and 41 menu options in total.

The radio comes with a desktop charger which indicates when the battery is charging and fully charged. The radio fits nicely into the charger and is not fiddly like the Puxing one. An antenna is supplied, belt clip, hand strap, 1200Mah li-ion battery and English manual.

The manual is worth noting as it is far better than the Puxing manual and very simple to understand.

On rx the stock antenna works very well. I think the s-meter is very generous in it's reading though. On tx the audio is excellent also. 5w on high and 1w on low power. All round for £47 delivered you just cannot go wrong. If you only need 2m and want a Chinese type handy on a budget i recommend this over the more popular Puxing's. It might not last 10 years, but with abit of care i'm sure it will give good service.