so i just passed my tech exam last week (finally) and now im trying to figure out what handheld to get. everyone keeps telling me different things and im kind of overwhelmed. like my friend at the club says get a baofeng to start and not waste money, but then someone else was like no no no get a yaesu ft-65 or even stretch for the vx-6r because the cheaper stuff will frustrate you. i genuinely dont know enough to know what the difference matters yet.

im mostly going to be hitting local repeaters, maybe some simplex, and eventually want to do some APRS stuff but thats way down the road. budget is probably $50-100 range but could maybe do a bit more if it really matters. is the baofeng uv-5r actually as bad as some people make it out to be or is that just snobs talking. genuinely asking, not trying to start a fight lol

congrats on passing the exam. ok so the baofeng debate is real but honestly for your use case at this point its probably fine to start with. yeah the filtering isnt great and it can be a little spurious but youre going to be listening and kerchunking repeaters for the first few months anyway, not trying to pass an EME contest. i started on a uv-5r and used it for almost two years before i moved up.

that said if you have even like $90 to spare i would honestly look at the yaesu ft-65r. its not that much more and it feels a lot more solid, the menu system is less of a nightmare, and the receiver is noticeably cleaner. the vx-6r is great but thats like $180-200 and i wouldnt throw that at a first HT unless you know youre sticking with the hobby. get something you wont cry over if you drop it at a field day.

i was in the exact same spot about 8 months ago and ended up going with the baofeng uv-k5 instead of the uv-5r because it was only a few bucks more and it does a lot more frequency coverage which i thought was cool. chirp works fine with it. honestly havent had any complaints hitting the 2m repeaters around here.

the one thing nobody told me that i wish they had — buy a better antenna almost immediately. the rubber duck that comes with those cheap HTs is genuinely awful and just swapping it for like a nagoya NA-771 made a real noticeable difference. that tip alone is probably worth more than the difference between radios at your budget level tbh