so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (Tech) and ive just been borrowing my club's old radio at meetings but i want to finally get my own handheld. the problem is every time i start researching i end up in a rabbit hole for like two hours and close the browser more confused than when i started

i mostly want to hit the local repeaters, maybe do some simplex stuff with a buddy of mine who just got his ticket too. nothing crazy. i looked at the baofeng uv-5r because everyone seems to have one but then people say the transmit audio is garbage and it'll interfere with everything and i should get something else. then someone else says its fine and just learn how to program it. honestly i dont know who to believe

budget is maybe $60-80 but i could stretch a little if something is clearly worth it. any help appreciated, been lurking here for a while and you guys seem to know your stuff

totally understand the rabbit hole problem, been there myself when i was starting out. ok so honest opinion — the uv-5r criticism is not entirely wrong but its also a little overblown for what youre trying to do. hitting local repeaters and chatting with a buddy? it'll work fine. the audio thing is real but its usually worse on the receive end than transmit in my experience, and a lot of it depends on your specific unit and how you set the mic gain.

that said if you can stretch to like $100 or so, a yaesu ft-65 or one of the wouxun kg-uv9d units are noticeably better quality and honestly not that much harder to program. the yaesu especially feels like a real radio in your hand if that makes sense. the menu system isnt as confusing as people make it out to be once you sit with the manual for an hour. i gave one to my nephew when he got his ticket and he figured it out in an afternoon

whatever you get, download chirp before you do anything else and save yourself the front panel programming headache

I was in the exact same spot like 8 months ago lol. ended up getting a baofeng bf-f8hp which is a step up from the uv-5r, little more power and the build feels slightly better. its been fine for what i do which is basically the same as what you described. no complaints honestly

one thing nobody told me that i wish they had — get a better antenna. the rubber duck that comes on these cheap radios is pretty mediocre and swapping it for a nagoya na-771 or something like that makes a real difference on weaker repeaters. costs like 12 bucks and it was probably the best upgrade i did