We live on 23 acres and use these almost every day to stay in touch while I am in the barn, hills etc. They work fine from inside a metal building to inside the house about 500 feet away. Actually they work from anywhere on the property. I tried them from down the road about 1/2 mile away, on the other side of a hill. Could hear the paging sound but we could not understand each other. I like the LED light, it is actually bright enough to be useful at night. Battery life is good, an over night charge lasts all day and then some. Motorola TalkAbout MJ270R 27-Mile 22-Channel FRS/GMRS Two-Way Radio
Devices work great, they are easy to use on basic functions and require a bit more time for some of the bonus functions but it's to be expected with so many features.
1 Star reduction for the distance claim. While I was not naive enough to believe I would easily get 27 miles, I'm lucky if I'm getting over 2 miles around where I live. I've tested it a few different ways but the range can easily be reduced to a significant extent. Having known that would be an issue going into the purchase, it works great for almost all the uses we had intended it for that didn't involve moderate distance.
The LED is a nice feature, although we haven't had need of it, it has come in handy once or twice. The unit is easy enough for a 3 year old to understand it's basic use and all the features have worked as expected. The charge so far has held up well and we've used it infrequently for about 8 months. If you have neighborhood friends/babysitters/kid's friends then it works great as a replacement to a cell phone. Although our kids are not old enough for a cellphone, it's definitely an alternative.
I purchased this with Motorola Earpiece with Boom Microphone. I couldn't first make them work together but the manual has an important detail:
Do not plug the headset when the radio is on. If you do that, then the radio immediately starts transmitting and does not stop no matter what you do until the head set is unplugged.
To use the headset, turn off the radio, plug in the headset, open the radio. When you do that it goes into VOX mode, it will start transmitting in about one second of your speaking. If you press PTT button, the VOX will be cancelled, and if you want to enable VOX again just turn off and on the radio.
I bought these radios for camping and to keep in my survival kit. Because I was on a budget I had to find the best value I could get. I believe these 2-way radios fill that roll. With 22 channels pus weather, they do everything I could want from a radio PLUS they take regular alkaline batteries in addition to the rechargeable battery pack. This makes them much more valuable than more expensive radios under disaster conditions in which the power may be out for days.
I'm truly glad I bought these.
We use these in our house to communicate with our 4 year old daughter at bedtime when she's in bed. Without these, she would scream for us ("Mommy, I want ____!!!) and wake up our 2 year old, who is a terror to get to go back to sleep. With these, she just presses the button and talks - much quieter, and also fun for her.
It took her a couple days to perfect the motor skills to press the button (she really needed to use more pressure) and now can operate it without a problem. I'm not sure a younger child would have the finger strength to press hard enough - our 2 year old tried but quickly became frustrated.
As with all walkie talkies, these won't operate at their advertised range if you live anywhere other than in the prairie, but I had read enough reviews to know that.
For what we use them for, they've been perfect. Sound quality is clear, operation is simple, and the charger is so easy to use - just drop them in and leave them - I prefer this to having to fish for the end of a charger cord and find the little hole, etc.
I know we'll get a lot of use out of these in the future with family vacations and camping or just as a fun "toy" for the kids. We had received kid's walkie talkies as a gift, and they didn't function at all. These were a much better option. Very happy we decided to get these!
The one big issue I have with the radios is the battery. The battery does not hold a charge for very long. I finally gave up and pulled it out to replace it with rechargeable AA batteries (3) That worked fine. The sound quality is OK at best. These were used for a cross country road trip and we had areas of limited coverage and areas of ok coverage. We were never more than a mile away from each other. I probably would NOT buy these again.
I used these on a road trip with 7 other cars. They worked great. I could hear everyone in the group and everyone else could hear us nice and clear. I had a set of Cobra radios the batteries only last about 3 hours and were dead. The Motorola radios only used 1 bar on the battery level and that was after a 6 hour drive and chatting almost the whole time.
I tested the range. It's about 2 miles in the city.
If we ever need another set of radios I'm definately buying Motorola ones again. - Disaster - Cruise - Walkie Talkie - 2 Way Radio'
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