so i just passed my technician exam last week and im trying to figure out what my first handheld should be. everyone i talk to says something different and its honestly kind of overwhelming. i was looking at the baofeng UV-5R because its cheap and i see it everywhere but then someone at the club told me to just save up for a yaesu or kenwood and not bother with the cheap stuff. i dont really know what id even be using it for yet — probably just local repeaters and maybe some APRS stuff down the road if i get into that. budget is maybe $150-200 but i could stretch it a bit if something is really worth it. is the baofeng thing actually that bad or is it fine for getting started

Congrats on passing the exam. Honestly the baofeng will work fine for getting started and there's nothing wrong with picking one up to learn the ropes — you'll figure out pretty quick what features you actually want vs what the marketing people tell you you want. That said if you've got $150-200 to spend the Yaesu FT-65R or even the FT-60R used is a really solid step up and you'll notice the difference in receive quality right away especially on busy repeaters. The build quality is just better, feels better in the hand, the buttons make sense. I started on a UV-5R years ago and it did the job but i switched to a Yaesu after about six months and kind of wished id just done that first. For APRS you'd eventually want something like the FT3DR anyway but thats a whole other conversation and you dont need to worry about that yet. Just get on the air first.

i literally just went through this exact thing lol. ended up getting the baofeng to start and its fine, like it works, but programming it without chirp was a nightmare and the manual reads like it was translated three times. once i got chirp set up it was fine though. if i were doing it again i might just go straight to something like a wouxun or the yaesu the other person mentioned. but dont let anyone make you feel bad about the baofeng either, half the people dunking on them are using them at home as a backup anyway