okay so i just passed my technician exam last week and everyone keeps telling me to get a baofeng to start out and then other people are like no dont waste your time get something decent. im just totally lost. i want to use it mainly for local repeaters and maybe some APRS stuff down the road but i dont even really know what i need to look for. like what does dual band actually get me that i cant do with a single band. and is the difference between a $30 radio and a $200 radio actually that noticeable or is it just brand loyalty stuff. i have about $150 to spend maybe a little more if its worth it. any advice from people who have actually used these things would be really appreciated, sorry if this is a dumb question

not a dumb question at all, everybody goes through this exact same thing. so dual band just means you can hit both 2m and 70cm repeaters which honestly matters more than you'd think once you start figuring out what's active in your area — some places have way more 70cm infrastructure than 2m and vice versa. the baofeng stuff works, i wont lie, but the receive quality is noticeably worse and they can spurious transmit in ways that make other hams grumpy at you. for $150 i'd seriously look at the yaesu ft-65 or maybe stretch a tiny bit for a wouxun kg-uv9d if you want more band coverage. the yaesu build quality is just in a completely different league and programming it doesnt require a 45 minute youtube tutorial. if APRS is on your radar eventually look at the yaesu ft3dr or the kenwood th-d74, but those are way above your budget so maybe that's a later upgrade path

I went through this same thing like 8 months ago. ended up getting a baofeng uv-5r first just to have something to play with while I figured out what I actually wanted. honestly it was fine for learning how repeaters work and stuff, just kinda plasticky feeling. upgraded to a yaesu ft-70dr a few months later and it was like night and day in terms of audio and just.. feeling like a real radio lol. the chirp software makes programming both of them pretty painless if you're not afraid of a little computer stuff. so i guess my take is either option can work just depends how patient you are