Manager


Manager - NA4M
Manager Notes

Reviews For: Baofeng/Pofung UV3R

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 : Baofeng/Pofung UV3R
Reviews: 127MSRP: 55
Description:
Tiny dual band radio like the Yaesu VX3R.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.verotelecom.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
001273.9
G4ILO Rating: 2011-06-02
Fantastic rig for the money Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This is a super little dual band radio. It's very small and very light. Build quality isn't the greatest, it could be described as flimsy, but what do you expect for the price? On the upside, it is light.

It is not a designed for ham bands radio so as others have noted it can TX outside the ham bands and there is no auto repeater shift. This isn't a problem if you program the repeaters into the memories which is easy to do by hand - I haven't seen the need to buy a programming cable.

There are a few rough edges. The supplied earpiece/mic locks the rig in TX unless you put a couple of turns of the cable through a suppression ferrite - obviously RF getting in via the cable.

Scanning is slow compared to other radios. But the Baofeng has pretty well all you want in a basic dual band HT. RF performance seems on a par with the smaller Yaesus. Battery endurance is excellent, and it uses cheap cellphone batteries.

I've taken this rig with me on trips I wouldn't have bothered taking a bulkier, heavier HT because it's small, light and cheap enough not to worry if anything bad happens to it.
K7GPS Rating: 2011-05-30
Concering discovery Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I'll agree with the other comments on this little $50 radio, that you get what you pay for it. My concern is, and I don't know who to address this to, is that this radio transmits out of band, at least on the UHF side, and I have issues with that, esp. if the wrong person, or some youngster gets a hold of one of these and programs it for tx on public service, e.g. police freqs. With Radio Reference and other web sites, it's easy to locate a list with the transmit freqs and tones.
G1KQH Rating: 2011-05-28
Brilliant!! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Bought 2 of these nifty little Dual band VHF/UHF Handhelds. Very sensistive, easy to use. 2 Watts of Output PWR, powered by a 3.7V 1200mAh Li-ion Battery, replacements are available via ebay very reasonable priced.

Mine were the 18 Menu latest models. The only gripe was the Manual only supported the previous 12 Menu model. It doesn't appear yet that the PDF download has been revised yet either? Without the manual you can pick up most things about the rig within 30 mins of use.

One little feature I did like, you can lock it on Frequency without even using the electronic lock. Just by a simple push down of the Dial Knob which snaps into place with no chance of it budging and being accidently knocked off freq until it is pulled smartly from its lockdown position.

Blowing the memories with the free download of software was a breeze to use, even though the install was in Chinese, the program was in English.

Great Value for money!

I recommend this little radio. Ideal for taking portable or popping into the suitcase for holiday use when getting bored.

The main top three Japanese rig manufactures are certainly going to have to pull up their socks, if they want to stop in the Handheld market. The Chinese are now right up their backsides. The quality is getting better all the time!
W2EEC Rating: 2011-05-22
VERY nice HT! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I am basing this review on what you get for $50.00 bucks. I got a heck of a deal.
First off this little HT doesn't program like any other Chinese HT. It is easy to program by hand. You don't need a cable to program it. Big selling point for me.
Second. There is only 18 menus to deal with. Very straight forward.
You have a VFO and 99 memories. Program UHF or VHF VFO with standard settings like power, Squelch, wide/narrow FM, power, step, offset and so on. They stay till you change them. Then program in VFO with the frequency, tone and shift and save in the memory slot you want. I filled almost all 99 slots and it took me almost two hours while I was outside on my patio enjoying some fresh air. If you want to make a change to the memory, just go to the memory and change it. When you are done and back out of the menu for the memory you want to change, the change is saved in to that memory. Easy.
The Yaesu VX-3R AA battery case both aftermarket and OEM fit but you have to file a small slot in the case. You can do it so it won't be seen. Regular AA batteries fit and some rechargeables NiMH AA batteries fit but some NiMH AA rechargeable brands are a bit thick and won't fit. For me it is good to know that there is other options for batteries out there besides the OEM battery.
I did purchase the serial programing cable and used it with a USB-to-Serial cable converter and it works awesome. I downloaded the file after I hand programed it to save it is a backup. I did download and upload to the radio several times to see if it would take each time. No problem at all :-)
It came with two single band antennas (UHF/VHF) that work nice but I purchased a Nagoya NA-701 dual band antenna and it works very nice and looks good with the small HT.
I turned on my UV-3R today at about 10AM showing 4.1 volts. It is now 12:48AM the next morning and I ran a net with and did some rag chew with it and it now shows 2 out of the 3 bars in the battery at 3.8 volts. Very nice so far. With new AA batteries installed I had 4.9 volts.
I got good reports from other people about the audio. The receive audio on my side is a bit loud and I wish it was a bit lower but for $50.00 bucks what do you want? I have seen a mod going around on the forums to fix this but I don't know if I really want to bother with it at this time. Some day I may.
To be honest, I really don't see any down side to the very nice little rig other than it only being two watts. I may get another one just to put in my truck as a just incase and I could get one to keep on my desk at work.
As far as charging goes, I don't use the charging dock. I don't like blindly charging a battery. Charging through the HT is fine and that is the way I am doing it. On the LCD of the HT it shows a blinking battery as it charges and when the battery disappears it stops charging. I have talked on it while charging with no problems.
O. I forgot the FM radio. It sounds good and the volume control has much better control than the volume control for the UHF/VHF side.
I don't think there is much that I didn't cover. I wanted to let you know what you were getting when you purchase the Baofeng UV-3R. A very small dual band HT that works real nice for the price of a night out at your local bar. It is by no means a Yaesu or a Icom but it does the job real nice for 1/4 the price of most others. I think it is worth it. Give it a try.
W7AQK Rating: 2011-05-19
For the price, it's pretty good! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I'd have trouble calling this little rig "brilliant". However, for the price, it is pretty amazing I suppose.

It's most comparable to the Yaesu models VX-1, VX-2, etc. Just about the same size. However, the UV3R lacks many of the features found in the Yaesu models. Most annoying is that there is no auto-offset for repeater operation. So, if you move from just below 147 mhz to just above 147 mhz, you have to manually change the offset from "minus" to "Plus", etc. You can sort of get around this by putting all your favorite repeaters in memory.

Another issue is the supplied antennas. They are not dual band. You have to switch from one antenna to the other, depending on whether you are using 2 meters or 440. The 2 meter antenna will "work" on 440, but I noticed a definite improvement by switching to the intended 440 antenna. That, of course, can be solved too, and usually these mini-antennas aren't that great anyway.

There is no "wide-band" receive, like with the Yaesus. You do get FM radio coverage, but no shortwave, etc. The FM receive capability seems pretty good. I can hear some FM stations fairly well that don't come in all that well, even on bigger radios.

I think the rotary encoder in the UV3R is pretty "cheap". Mine tends to hang up every so often, and you have to punch buttons, or jiggle the dial control, to get it to continue tuning correctly. I worry about this, as I strongly suspect the encoder may go "south" on me one of these days. You have to use it for both frequency change, and volume change, so it gets a lot of use. Maybe it will hold up, but it sure is "clunky".

On charging, the light is supposed to turn green when it becomes fully charged. Mine never did.

Supposedly this puts out 2 watts, but I really wonder if 2 watts from a 4 volt battery is really going to happen. I haven't put a power meter on it though. Still, I can bring up some mediocre range repeaters, but can't hold them very well. A better antenna might improve this.

Well, those are a bunch of the "negatives". Not trying to bash this thing, but you need to know some of the downside issues. Otherwise, it's a decent little rig for the money. It would make a great "hamfest" HT, or maybe a good back-up radio, but I don't think it should be your only HT. There's no touch tone pad either, so that limits its versatility.

I've only made a couple of contacts with it, but the reports were O.K. Volume output is very good, and you do get an earphone/mic combo with it. Surprisingly, it also has a "VOX" feature, but I couldn't get it to respond consistently. I don't like VOX operation anyway, so no big deal for me.

Oh, one other little nit-pick here. If you are setting tone codes, and not sure which code you need, you can't step through them easily. You set one, test it, then go to the next. But the menu keeps taking you back to menu "1", so each time you have to change menu numbers to get to "TX Code", then hit the edit key, then step to the next tone code. Pretty laborious!

Okay! Enough said. In summary, for $50 you get a working HT, but you won't be thrilled with the lack of otherwise common handy features. It's probably a "4" or "5" for price, but only a "2" for features and functionality. So I give it a "3" overall.
K6CTA Rating: 2011-05-19
Can't beat the price! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I ordered one of these from a seller on eBay. It cost $52 including shipping. Arrived in about a week. Super small radio, easy to use. Best of all, the manual is actually in English that you can understand! Very easy to program; works great. The few oddities are easily overlooked considering what I paid for it. Why spend more for a basic dual band HT??
G0FTD Rating: 2011-05-05
Brilliant Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I bought two of these rigs a week or two apart.

The firmware on each rig was different. Some menus were added on later versions. Early versions didnt support an S-meter. But all other required features were there. Even the early versions lacking some menus are brilliant.

You get a 2m and 70cm FM rig. 2 watts out. Can be attached to a key ring like I did it's so small.

Handy built in flashlight, FM broadcast radio with good sensitivity and great performance on 2/70cm. Comes with a charger, 1500mA battery, 2 antenna for 2/70cm, over the ear speaker mic.

Rig works fine, programming memories is easy, wide and narrow deviation, all usual freq steps.

This rig is tiny!

Yaesur VX3R accessories can be used too.

DC input jack and speaker mic socket provided.

I bought two of them and pleased I did.

I recommend this rig.