okay so i just passed my technician exam last week (finally) and now im trying to figure out what handheld to get. ive been reading forums and watching youtube for like two weeks straight and honestly it made things worse not better because everyone seems to have a totally different opinion and half the threads are from 2017 so i dont know how relevant any of it is anymore.

my main thing is i want to hit the local repeaters and maybe eventually do some simplex stuff. i live in a pretty hilly area so im not sure how that affects things. budget is somewhere around 100-150 bucks, maybe a little more if theres a really good reason. ive seen a lot of people talk about the baofeng uv-5r because its cheap but then other people act like recommending it is basically a crime. and then theres the yaesu ft-65 and the alinco stuff and i just... yeah. any help appreciated

congrats on passing the exam, welcome to the hobby. so the baofeng hate is a little overblown in my opinion but there is something to it - the transmit audio quality and frequency accuracy can be all over the place, and some of the cheaper ones drift more than they should. that said plenty of people have learned the hobby just fine on a uv-5r and it didnt hurt anything.

if you can stretch just a little bit, the yaesu ft-65 is really solid for the price. simple to program, sounds decent on audio, built well enough that you can drop it without your heart sinking. the chirp software works great with it too which matters a lot when youre trying to load up a bunch of repeater frequencies without going insane. for hilly terrain an HT is an HT - terrain is gonna limit you no matter what you buy at this price point, so dont stress that part too much until you figure out where the local repeaters are and just try hitting them. you might be surprised.

I was in basically the same spot about two years ago and ended up getting the ft-65 on a recommendation from my local club and honestly its been great. no complaints. the only thing i'd add is check if your area has an active club because sometimes they do loaner radios or know which repeaters are actually being used - theres nothing more discouraging than programming up a bunch of repeaters and finding out half of them are dead. good luck