so ive been licensed for about three weeks now (tech class) and everyone keeps telling me to just get a handheld to start out and i thought ok that sounds simple enough but then i went down the rabbit hole and now im staring at like six browser tabs trying to figure out the difference between the baofeng uv-5r and the yaesu ft-65 and the wouxun kg-uv9d and honestly i have no idea what im doing

my main thing is i want to hit the local repeaters, maybe do some APRS eventually, and just generally have something solid to learn on. budget is probably under $200 but i could stretch a bit if it actually matters. does the more expensive stuff make a real difference for a beginner or am i just going to confuse myself with features i wont use for years anyway

also i keep seeing people say baofeng programming is a nightmare, is that still true or has chirp gotten better? just dont want to spend my first month fighting the radio instead of actually getting on the air

oh man i remember this exact feeling when i got my ticket. ok so honest answer - the baofeng will get you on repeaters and it works, but the build quality is kind of what you'd expect for $25. buttons feel cheap and the receive audio isnt great. i used one for about a year and then switched to the yaesu ft-60 (not the 65, the 60, which you can find used pretty easily) and the difference in feel and audio clarity was pretty noticeable.

for what you described, hitting local repeaters and eventually APRS, i'd actually look at the yaesu ft3dr if you can stretch your budget a little. it does APRS built in, the dual band is solid, and yaesu's menu system makes a lot more sense than some of the cheaper chinese radios once you spend an hour with it. chirp does work with most of these now and its gotten way better, but yeah some of the baofengs are still a little fiddly to get cloning cables working with depending on which driver your computer wants to install.

honestly though if budget is real tight just grab the uv-5r to start, get on a repeater, see if you actually like HT operating before you spend more. plenty of people never need anything fancier.

im in basically the same boat as you, got my tech about two months ago. i ended up going with the wouxun kg-uv9d and im pretty happy with it so far. hits my local repeater no problem and the build feels way sturdier than the baofengs my buddy has. the menu is a little weird at first but i got chirp working with it pretty quick, took maybe 20 minutes to figure out the right cable driver and then programming was actually easy.

dont stress too much about picking the perfect one, most of these radios will do what you need when you're just starting out. the repeater doesnt care what radio you're using lol