so i just passed my technician exam last week and im trying to figure out what handheld to get. ive been reading threads here and elsewhere for like two weeks now and somehow feel MORE confused than when i started lol. everybody seems to have strong opinions and half of them contradict each other.

like some people say just get the cheap baofeng uv-5r and learn on that, other people act like youre committing a crime if you buy one. then theres the yaesu ft-60 which seems popular but its kind of old now? and ive seen people mention the vx-6r but that ones pricier. i mostly want to use it for local repeaters and maybe some simplex chatting, possibly GMRS crossover stuff down the road. nothing crazy. i dont have a base station or anything yet this would literally be my first radio ever.

does dual band even matter for a beginner or is that just a nice to have thing. sorry if this is a really basic question i just dont want to spend money on something dumb

honestly dont stress too much about this one, any of those radios will get you on the repeaters and let you start making contacts. that said i do think the baofeng hate is a little overblown for a first radio — yeah the build quality isnt great and programming it without chirp is a nightmare, but plenty of people learned the basics on one and then upgraded once they knew what they actually wanted. its not like youre gonna be doing anything that requires a $300 HT right out of the gate.

that said if you can stretch the budget a bit the ft-60r is genuinely a solid radio, tougher than it looks, audio is way clearer on the receive side which matters more than people admit. the vx-6r is nice too but submersible rating and all those extra features might be overkill if youre just hitting local repeaters. dual band is worth having just because a lot of areas have both 2m and 70cm repeaters and youll want the flexibility eventually even if you mostly live on 2m at first. good luck and welcome to the hobby

I was in the exact same spot about a year ago and ended up going with a Yaesu FT-65 which nobody really talks about but its basically a stripped down simpler version of the FT-60 and I really liked it to start. Easier menus, sounds good, built solid. Eventually got a Kenwood TH-D74 which is a whole other thing but that was way later after I knew what I was doing haha.