Baofeng UV-6R Review (Ham radio / walky talkie)

Thank you chrisc. Great info.

For folks knowledgeable in US laws, can this radio be used by someone without a Ham Radio License if they stick to certain frequencies? If yes, would it have greater range that typical higher-end non-Ham walkie talkies under similar conditions (osticals, etc?

How come label on the radio in the OP is labeld "Baofeng", but the labels on the BG product page say "pofung"?

EDIT: Content added.

Yep. :slight_smile: Always has been, although I never owned a VHF / UHF / ham radio until recently. I’m seriously impressed with my UV-82 in terms of build quality, features, and reception for the price.

“Pofung” is another brand name created by Baofeng as an attempt to make it more pronounceable in the Western world. Apparently the Chinese phonetic pronunciation of the word “Baofeng” is actually closer to “Pofung”. But the Baofeng name is already quite famous worldwide, so they also continue to sell units under that brand name. They’re both identical otherwise.
https://baofengradio.us/pofung-radio

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: eeeehhhh… It’s likely that no one would find out if you were using it on (for instance) FRS or GMRS frequencies. I wouldn’t do it (I already have an amateur license), but, hey, it’s a free country!

What a great piece of information. Thank you SB :)

Much appreciated Herb. Getting the basic license has been on my wish list. I have obtained materials to study to prepare for the test, but I'm still dragging my feet on the actual studying.

A ham buddy has a SWR meter and one day we got tired of lights, cars and other stuff and decided to measure all HTs we had flying around! The 8W on the latest Baofengs is an actual improvement, the meter showed approx. 7.5W (analog meter, so not very exact).

I personally don’t think I’ll need more than 5W power as most of my repeaters are not far away and my other use cases are driving with friends, shopping malls or something like that.

The UVR5 TP I bought was from Sainstore nextbigthink and was on sale/the same price as other 5W were advertised.

I am pretty sure Baofeng is like the ThorFire or Convoy of ham radio.

Also the extra power on some of the rubbish antennas could be more harm than good. They aren’t known for being the best tuned antennas but the radios are really hardy and dont mind a massive antenna mismatch.

Thanks for the informative review! I remember being interested in HAM radio in my earlier days. At that time the radios were HUGE and you could talk to people all over the world. Are the current radios still so large and how does the UV-R6 compare to those radios ability to communicate all over the world? Also, how does one go about obtaining a HAM license (testing, cost, etc.)? Lastly, the UV-6R appears to be out of stock at BG currently, would you recommend the 5R or waiting for the 6R?

The range all depends on the frequency being used. The 2m (144 MHz - 148 MHz) and 70cm (420 MHz - 450 MHz) very-high and ultra-high frequency bands that Baofeng supports definitely won’t work for worldwide communication, in fact you’ll be lucky to talk to the closest nearby city. The ham frequencies that are good for communication across the world or to the ISS are in the low, medium, and high frequency bands (ref), and the Baofeng models don’t support those bands.

Make sure that you can legally use the Baofeng models where you live, and on what frequencies. If so, there’s definitely no reason to wait for the UV-6R, although you can readily find it on eBay if you prefer its styling. Inside the shell, it’s basically a UV-82, which is also an excellent option. The UV-5R is also great, as are the BF-F8+ and GT-3 Mark-II and Mark-III.

Thank you sb! So, in light of what you stated regarding reception, what exactly is the a radio like the UV-6R used for and how does it differ from a walkie talkie?

There are hams that use them for chatting with other local hams, and some areas have repeaters with high antennas that allow them to extend the coverage a bit. But aside from that, they’re mainly useful for groups of people or organizations / companies to communicate with other members within a fairly small local area. In that sense, they are basically walkie talkies, in other words, handheld radios. The Baofengs are just special because of their affordable price and feature set, combined with removable antennas and batteries and higher transmit power compared to the little FRS radios that they sell in plastic packs as outdoor sports accessories. The Baofengs can also be configured to communicate with those FRS radios, but again it’s a legal gray area in many countries.

OK, so basically they are a super long distance walkie talkie? So, if one purchased multiple UV-R6’s, this is something that one could use to communicate with friends and family within their town for example?

Super flexible, I’d say. And yes, they should be sufficient to communicate with friends and family within their town, but there’s a lot of factors that can drastically increase or decrease the effective range.

How about the licensing; what is required and how much would it cost?

That’s a considerably more complex question, depends on the country and the usage case.

Assuming you’re still in Florida, the ARRL has a page that has links to exam material, study guides, and testing dates and locations. The testing fee is usually $15, IIRC, and that includes taking all three license tests (if you want, it’s not required).

Baofeng keeps changing the outer case without doing much internally .
I would like to see the toy features removed ( Flashlight / alarm ) , and some serious internal upgrades .

Don’t get me wrong , I really appreciate what Baofeng has done , I just dont care for the side order of junk .
And they just keep adding new cases to the internals and calling them new models … ( ? ) I guess car companies do it all the time …

My last Baofeng will be the GT3tp ( Famous last words ) , and I will move the rest out the door .
I have the Tonfa - TYT - UV-82 - UV-5r - GT3 ( MK1 ) and a Baojie 218 ……
I will see how good or bad the GT3tp is , I may just end up with two GT3’s …
And if anyone is looking for a killer antenna ( Kinnota AZ507R ) , it is simply BOSS !
Another 10 minutes and it should be dark out !
Take the F1 for a walk …

Thank you Sir, I appreciate the info!

Thanks for a great review.

I’ve just been given one of these as a present to replace my defective UV-5R.

It seems to be going OK apart from being a bit over sensitive on the squelch front. The keypad lights keep lighting up randomly which I assume is caused by a momentary signal breaking through. I have tried programming the squelch settings via Chirp (as I did for the UV-5R) but i’m not sure if it is taking them as when I read the data back into chirp the original squelch values are there.

Chirp does report it is using an experimental driver, so maybe this may get fixed sometime?

Anyway I will keep on testing and see how it goes.

Agree with the antennae comment. The stock one needs to go to really help out. The pictured nagoya is what I went to as well. Seems well worth it. The test isn’t hard to get a tech license now that there is no code requirement in the US.