okay so i just passed my technician exam last week and everyone keeps telling me to just get a baofeng to start and thats fine but then i went down a rabbit hole and now im looking at yaesu FT-60s and the wouxun kg-uv9g and honestly i have no idea what im doing anymore. my buddy at the club said get something with NOAA weather alerts built in which makes sense because we get some nasty storms here in the fall.

what i dont really understand is if the more expensive HTs are actually worth it for someone just starting out or if i should just grab a cheap one and see if i even like the hobby first. i mostly want to hit the local repeaters and maybe do some SOTA hiking stuff eventually. battery life matters a lot to me because i do long day hikes. im not in a huge hurry to buy but would love to hear what people actually use day to day rather than just reading spec sheets

honestly the FT-60 is kind of the classic answer to this question and i still think its a solid one. built like a tank, audio is loud and clear, the battery lasts forever compared to most chinese radios, and Yaesu actually supports it with firmware and accessories. ive dropped mine more times than i want to admit and it just keeps going. the UI is a little clunky to program but once its set up you mostly dont touch it. for hitting repeaters and hiking its basically perfect. the baofengs work fine too and theres nothing wrong with starting there but if youre already thinking about SOTA i'd just skip ahead to something a little more durable.

the wouxun stuff is honestly pretty decent too, better build quality than the cheap baofengs in my experience, but i personally dont have as much seat time with them so i cant say much beyond that.

im kind of in the same boat as you, got my ticket about three months ago and ended up going with the FT-65R which is the dual band version of what the other guy mentioned. no regrets so far, fits in my jacket pocket fine and the battery really does last a long time. only thing is programming it without CHIRP is kind of a pain so just download CHIRP before you do anything else and save yourself the headache lol