BTECH UV-25X4 (Second Gen.) Mini Mobile 25 Watt Tri Band Base, Mobile Radio: VHF, 1.255M, UHF Amateur (Ham)

If you have a vehicle that you would like to install this in but don't have much space, this is seriously the radio for you. It is a very capable radio, yet very tiny. I can literally hold this thing in the palm of my hand. I drive an $800 car so I have no problem drilling into the dash and mounting this thing. There have been a lot of complaints in the reviews and I was skeptical about buying but decided to dive in anyway and I'm glad I did. This radio has held up well within the past month or so that I've used it, I've reached folks about 22 mi away using a larsen tri-band antenna. I'm seriously considering the 50x2 as a base station because this worked to well. As for the complaints... Is there an audible click? Yes. It is insanely loud and annoying? Annoying yes, loud no. I don't use 200mhz so I never have this issue. Is the fan loud? I actually laughed, it's really not that bad. It winds up while transmitting and sounds like a little rc car. While driving, this is not very noticeable and I just ignore it and enjoy my $100 radio. I also read that when using the radio powered via the cigarette lighter, it will heat up enough to melt. This did not happen in my case, however, I wired it up to my car battery for a more reliable connection. As for the programming side, do yourself a favor and download Chirp and use it. Makes this radio SO much easier to program, although you should know how to do this manually. Admittedly, this does take some time. My only complaint is the scanning. I have to enter the freq range I want to scan, rather than just select a band and hit scan. Minor complaint, but just what I prefer. I'd recommend this to anyone looking to jump in and not spend a whole lot of money.

This little radio is a gem. I use a cheap power supply I bought off Amazon to power it up to 13.6 V dc. It's my base station although I built a converter from the AC power supply to a "cigarette lighter" supply to run it at home. I wanted a mobile ham radio but didn't want to have to run a cable from my battery into the passenger compartment (I'm not that committed!). Using the cheap Amazon power supply and a female cigarette lighter adapter I put in a little plastic tool box this guy is perfect for my needs. I can use it home and get a very nice signal and when I want to go mobile I just unplug it and my car can handle the 7A draw with no problem. Is this a real hard-core ham radio? No. Can it serve a great purpose in your car? Yes. Can you also use it at as a 20+ watt base station. Absolutely. I have been amazed at how good the transmit power and reception is. I will warn you the "cigarette lighter" gets warm and will need to be adjusted in your home power box. I plan on finding a power receptacle with wires and using those instead of the "cigarette lighter" to plug into my home power base. I can hit repeaters many miles away with this little gem, I also enjoy the 220 bands. There is not a lot of activity there but I plan on changing that and may even host my own 220 net. There's no reason we should give up bands just because the big 2 don't spend any money to make their radios compatible. Is it Chinese? Yes. Might it infringe on intellectual property of other radio companies? I don't know, that's above my pay grade. Can it be a nice base station and mobile station? Absolutely. The power draw is low enough that a car's "lighter" circuit should support it. Overall, I like the sound of this radio and love the low cost.

Lots of features that you'd expect from a more expensive radio, such as Mic Gain, OLED color display that is fully configurable. Size is tiny, and will fit into the pocket pouch of a hoodie easily. Audio quality rivals your big 3 labels, and nobody will know you're using this radio unless you either tell them what you're using. However, there there are a couple of issues with this unit that I'd like to review. First issue is the pinout of the external mic and speaker. It is not standardized to anything, PTT and Mic lines are two separate leads instead of a single pin like Yaesu. Also the hole is recessed, but that normal 3.5mm TRRS connectors WILL NOT be inserted fully unless the plugs housing can fit into the hole. The house size must the same size as an iphone headset connector housing, anything wider will not fit. That includes standard diameter plug housings. So, if you want to use an external mic or a headset, get ready to figure out how to wiring one yourself, it be harder than normal. You can work around this issue by the use of iPhone headset extension cable to solve this problem. Beside to buy quality so that the plugs actually is to spec, and will make contact with all 4 connectors properly. Second, and the biggest issue is the included cigarette lighter power cable. The cigarette lighter adapter is underrated, and WILL melt if you use it under 25w power with heavy usage. I was running a talk net as a substitute net controller for local repeater for about 2hrs, and the spring inside the cigarette lighter adapter headed up so hot that melted and fused in with the housing. With the spring tension gone after the casing melted, the connector will fail, and you will end up in the dark. I've emailed Btech/Baofeng tech about this. They simply told me to buy another connector from them for $10+ shipping despite that would not actually solve the problem from happening again, and the radio is still under warranty. An alternative adapter to use a Powerex brand cigarette to OEM-T for $15, that is rated for 15amp and will have a less likelihood of melting during those times "when it counts". But if you're going to do anything serious, it's best to actually use a better connector than the cigarette connector such as Powerpole that is much more resilient against heavier loads. I've included a picture of the melted connector. Note bulge in body of the housing, and the center power pin no longer protrude due to the loss of spring tension, and being fused with the housing.

I've always been a fan of the 220 MHz ham band but it can be hard to find decent multiband rigs that include it. I wanted something like that for my mother, who's also a ham, and bought this. She uses it as a base at home, on an outdoor wire j-pole. After playing around with it for a few weeks, I decided I liked it so much that I bought another one for myself, as a mobile, using the multiband Nagoya antenna. Great little radio, especially at the price I paid. Just three caveats: 1. As some others have noted, radio uses a mechanical relay for switching between 2m and 1.25m. As a result, if you're hoping to have it monitor both of those bands, you'll be annoyed by the constant clicking of the relay. As a practical matter, this means you can manually switch, or you can just monitor one band or the other, but don't plan on trying to monitor both simultaneously. 2. Broadcast FM reception through the Nagoya 2m/220/440 antenna is not very good. 3. Speaker is not quite loud enough for me in my mobile installation. Engine noise in my old vehicle is louder than a typical new car, and I hate A/C so there's also more wind noise than what many other drivers would have. Still, Kenwoods and Yaesus have been able to overcome those challenges, while I'm sometimes unable to hear this radio well enough. It wouldn't be hard to do a work-around for this and I might do so eventually. Still, it's a great little radio for the money. I have gotten glowing signal reports from all who have heard it, and it covers a respectable range.

For the money spent it's a pretty decent radio and does the meter and a quarter band, which is what I'm exclusively using it on. I'm not a big fan of the speaker it is internal and can be difficult to make out incoming transmissions if you have any kind of road noise. the power cable is also a weak link it broke couple days after receiving due to a bad solder joint in the plug that goes into aux power. I was going to switch it to a power distribution anyway but the quality of the wire is also pretty low. The insulation cracked around the " strain relief" on the back of the unit. Upon opening up the unit to fix the exposed wire i was surprised to find a pretty sloppy solder job. There were several traces that are bridged which I'm assuming was accidental. I'm posting an image of the insides for those who wish to look closer. Update 3/13/18: Well not too surprisingly this unit has suffered a crib death after about 5 months of very light use on 1.25M. Your mileage may vary but I am most disappointed. Stick to the HT's if you're going to buy Boafeng. The savings aren't worth it on these more expensive Mobile units.

The order arrived quickly and was well packaged. It is very easily programmed using CHIRP software. The unit has a solid, well-built feel to it, and the buttons and knobs have a decent feel, as well. The mic fits comfortably in the hand, and it allows you to perform most radio functions from the mic. It transmits and receives as it should on all appropriate bands. I'm impressed by the versatility of this little unit, as it can serve as a base station, a mobile unit, or pack it in a backpack! I'm also very impressed by BTECH's mission statement, as it instills confidence and trust in their integrity as a company! Highly recommend! Great value for the money!

This is a decent little radio. (It's 'kinda' fun to play with I really like it) The only "hiccup" (if you want to call it that) I've encountered so far is that the frequency/memory knob (rotary encoder) needs to be deliberately turned. It increments slow and slower than I think it needs to, but that's really a fairly minor issue for me. For the $138.00 I spent, "I received a good bit of radio" in my humble opinion. It's a little slower with "CHIRP" when sending the data to the radio, but this does have 200 memory positions. There are some minor errors in the manual, but on the whole, the manual is quite helpful. I didn't try the previous version, but there's not much to dislike with this unit. I'm not going to mention make this a long review, but it has a whole lot of things to like for the money. (and I probably should leave out "for the money" but it is quite inexpensive for what it appears to be capable of) I didn't measure the current on either transmit or receive. I simply cut the connector off put some Anderson Powerpoles back on both sides. (so I could still use it mobile from the 12vdc dash accessory socket) So I'm powering it from a 40 amp ASTRON. It does move the current a little but not much. (I'd guess 3 amps maybe on transmit - on power up it's a tiny movement on the ASTRON'S 40 amp scale)

So as a new HAM I wanted to get some entry level gear that would not break the bank. The BTECH stuff is a perfect fit in that regard. Of the offerings the UV-25X4 was the perfect fit for me because it has a simple install being that it can be powered directly off a car cigarette lighter, and its small enough to fit in my small car (Honda Fit w/ 5 Speed Manual) and it had a nice layout, monitoring features, etc. Bonus having the 1.25M (220MHz) as I actually really plan to use that as well. So for the heartburn? Here is the list of things I found to be odd, and/or problematic. 1.) It came with some screws for mounting. Flat tip screws that you would use for through mounting with a nut on the other side and some regular screws with a sharp tip for threading directly into a material. They did not include the nuts to use the through bolts with... Also I think on both of them they were a bit too long to be used in any car without puncturing something behind your mounting point. So this required a trip to home depot to buy some new bolts and nuts to mount the unit. 2.) Advertised quad monitoring (up to) but it really does not work that way in practice. First if you have a 220MHz channel included in any of the channels to be monitored along with the UHF/VHF the relay will click on and off like crazy on this thing, and I am not sure how long that will last before it wears out. Second if any channel is busy, it ignores the others. So if I am on a fairly active repeater, it will never pick up anything on the other monitored channels as it only monitors during a period of time with no other activity at all. It's best to not call this multi-monitoring it's more like "auto scanning" where it will scan up to 4 channels automatically when there is no activity currently on a given channel. Even the dead-space between people keying wont let it pick up other monitored channels as there is a built in "wait" before it seems to go back to scanning. Speaking of scanning, it appears that while scanning even if no activity is picked up it will not monitor any other channel. So forget having your favorite repeater monitored while you scan so that you can pick up a conversation while still listening for activity on your primary channel. It simply will not receive anything or listen to anything while scanning. 3.) My largest pain point. The external audio connection. The built in speaker is better than expected given the small size of the unit. But it's tiny and will distort at higher volume. If you have a loud cabin in your car or poor hearing you are going to probably want an external speaker. For some reason they put a totally different audio out on this unit than pretty much any other radio uses (Including their own 50x2 and 50x3 radios) HAM radio is MONO there is no stereo so the normal connection is a standard MONO TS connection. If you buy any external HAM or CB speaker this is the connection it will come with. Stereo connections like your headphones or computer speakers are STEREO so they come with TRS connections. Lastly combo jacks like usually found on a cell phone combine STEREO speaker output and MICROPHONE input and use a TRRS connection. This unit uses a TRRS connection like a cell phone would have... So they designed it to be a multi purpose jack that could have a microphone, ptt, mono speaker output, and ground. I bought 3 different adapters to make my CB speaker work and none of them did. In the manual it says this connection is compatible with standard TS stereo speakers, but its not! I tried all 3 adapters, I tried my TRRS headphones that came with my phone, and I tried normal TS headphones I use with my laptop. None of them work because this is not a normal pin out for a audio out jack. The unit should have come with some kind of adapter and I really do not understand why they need a microphone input at all. As I messed around with this thing often it would start to send transmissions because it detected some kind of input on the microphone jack so I hope I didn't send any crazy signals over the air. Short of fabricating my own adapter using a pigtail I am not sure what to do with this and a bit grieved over all the time and money I spent on adapters and troubleshooting. I appreciate the support the product has, as every BTECH product I have purchased they reach out to you and ask if it was delivered and if you have any issues. I did contact them about this issue and explain what was going on. All they told me was they gave this thing stereo output so it would be easy to integrate into your car audio system or a laptop. I can tell you. It wont. First unlike a normal TRS or TRRS output with stereo, this connector actually is still mono and they added a proprietary PTT connection. So plug this into your car or laptop with a male to male cable will just not work and will cause undesired transmissions. I'll attach the pin out from the manual as well as a pinout of a normal TRRS connection to this review. I hope they make some kind of adapter and send it to us for free because in its current state the audio out is a lie and not working. It was clearly designed for some kind of device with a PTT feature and not a normal speaker output. Hope this review helps, and I will probably do a video review as well at some point to go into more detail.