so i passed my tech exam about three weeks ago and im trying to figure out which handheld to get as my first radio. ive been lurking and reading reviews for like two weeks straight and honestly i think it made things worse because now i have like six tabs open and no idea what to do

the main thing i want to do is hit local repeaters and maybe eventually do some APRS stuff once i figure that out. my budget is pretty flexible, i could go up to like $200 maybe a little more if it actually makes sense. i keep seeing people mention the Baofeng UV-5R which is like $25 and also the Yaesu FT-60 which is way more, and i genuinely cant tell if the cheaper one is fine for a beginner or if ill regret it later. also someone in another thread mentioned the Kenwood TH-D74 which seems amazing but also $600 so probably not right now

anyway any thoughts would be helpful, especially from people who have actually used these things day to day and not just read the specs

welcome to the hobby, dont stress too much about this decision honestly. for local repeaters the Baofeng will technically work but man the build quality and receiver performance are just not in the same league as the Yaesu or Kenwood stuff. i started with a UV-5R and it did the job but i found myself upgrading within like 8 months because the thing was kind of annoying to program and the audio was muddy compared to what other people on the repeater were using

if i were doing it over id probably just get the Yaesu FT-60 right away, its been around forever, its built like a tank, and the receiver is actually decent so you wont get as much interference on busy bands. for APRS down the road you might eventually want something with that built in but thats a whole other rabbit hole and honestly just getting on repeaters first and learning how everything works is the right call. the FT-60 doesnt do APRS natively but its such a solid radio for learning the basics that i still recommend it all the time

i went through basically the exact same thing lol. ended up with the Yaesu FT-70DR which is a little newer than the FT-60 and does digital C4FM which idk if you care about that right now but its nice to have. around $150 i think. works great on repeaters and i've had zero issues with it