so ive been licensed for about three weeks now (technician) and everyone keeps telling me to just get a baofeng to start and thats fine but then i go look online and theres like a hundred different models and some people swear by the UV-5R and others say get the UV-82 and then someone in my local club said just skip all that and get a yaesu FT-60 and now im completely turned around

my main use case is going to be hitting the local repeaters, maybe some simplex with my buddy who just got his ticket too, and eventually i want to do some SOTA stuff but thats way down the road. budget is probably around $50-80 but i could stretch to maybe $100 if something is really worth it

honestly just want something that wont frustrate me to death while im still learning the basics. the menu systems on some of these things look like a nightmare from the youtube videos ive watched. any thoughts appreciated, sorry if this gets asked all the time here

totally understand the overwhelm, been there myself not too long ago. honestly for your use case i'd say dont overthink the baofeng debate too much — the UV-5R works fine for what you're describing, hits repeaters no problem, and if you drop it or something weird happens you're not out a ton of money. the menus ARE annoying at first but once you program it with CHIRP it becomes pretty much set and forget.

that said, if you can stretch to around $90-100 the Yaesu FT-60 your club guy mentioned is genuinely a step up in terms of receive quality and the build just feels more solid in your hand. i had a UV-5R for my first year and then got an FT-60 and the difference in how it picks up weaker signals on the input is noticeable. for SOTA down the road that matters more than you'd think. either way get CHIRP set up before you do anything else, programming these things by hand through the keypad will make you want to throw it across the room

i went through this exact same thing lol. ended up with the UV-82 mostly because someone on reddit said the dual PTT buttons were nice and honestly i dont even use that feature. works fine though, been hitting W5XYZ (our local linked repeater) every evening no issues. just make sure whatever you get you double check the frequency coverage because some of the cheaper ones have weird gaps or the transmit power isnt what they advertise