so i've been a tech for about 8 months now and ive mostly been doing stuff on my baofeng uv-5r that i grabbed right after passing my exam, which is fine for what it is but i keep feeling like im fighting it every time i try to do something that should be simple, like programming it without chirp is basically impossible and even with chirp it feels kinda clunky

anyway i want to step up to something better. mostly i'd be using it for local repeaters, some simplex with a buddy a few towns over, and id like to eventually get into aprs if thats even something you do on a handheld. budget is probably 150-250 bucks, maybe a little more if something is really worth it. ive been looking at the yaesu ft-60 and also the wouxun kg-uv9d but honestly i dont know enough to know what actually matters and what is just spec sheet noise

also does dual band even matter that much for local stuff or am i overthinking it

the ft-60 is a solid choice and ive recommended it to probably a dozen people over the years, its just a tank, mine has been dropped more times than i care to admit and still works perfect. the receiver on it is noticeably better than most of the cheaper Chinese radios which actually matters more than people think when youre trying to hit a repeater thats not super close

for APRS on a handheld though youre gonna want to look at something like the yaesu ft3dr or the vx-8dr if you can stretch the budget, or the kenwood th-d74 if you want to go all in, that thing does aprs natively and has a built in tnc which is really nice. doing aprs on a regular HT requires an external tnc or a smartphone app setup which works but its kinda janky depending on what youre trying to do

dual band definitely doesnt hurt and most repeaters around here are 2m anyway but having 70cm is handy more often than you'd expect, especially if your local club does anything on that band

i went through the exact same thing a while back and ended up getting the wouxun kg-uv9d plus and honestly i like it a lot, feels way more solid than the baofeng and the menu system is actually comprehensible without staring at the manual for an hour. not saying the ft-60 is bad at all i just havent used one personally

one thing i'll throw out there -- if you're near any decent sized city check if theres a hamfest coming up because you can sometimes find used kenwood or icom handhelds for not much more than new chinese radios and the build quality difference is pretty noticeable