Baofeng UV-28+ "Hand Held" Ham Radio

Link to Purchase the UV-28+ on Amazon -- $39.99

To me, ham radios are purposeful. While many folks get them for personal enjoyment, Myself and my friends use them for communication in situations where cell use is annoying, disruptive, and/or not reliable or possibly even present. From mountain biking, to skiing on Mt Hood, to remote camping adventures one of us goes walking the dog or kayaking accross the lake... having comms really benefits our group for coordination and safety For those sorts of self propelled activites... generally having a giant bulky brick on you isn't ideal. From the weight ithat comes with it, to the storage of the item, or just the literal pain of falling on it... size matters.

So why did I purchase this near brick sized Baofeng UV-28+, what did I learn about it, and is it right for you? Read on, I'll share where it's found value in my stable of radios.

Where I think the Baofeng UV-28+ Makes Sense As A radio

Where I think these radios make sense, is an "around the base" radio. Whether it's for bringing along with you between your shop and your house, or carrying around your basecamp while out in the woods, or simply left in your rig that you can't justify putting a mobile setup into... this radio's plus sized cons starts to be outweighed by it's positives in situations where mobility is a need, but the mobility is between locations is modest and the radio can easily just be left to sit nearby wherever you have relocated to.

This is where the radio shines. Chuck the UV-28+ in your wife's camp chair cupholder so she can know you aren't dead while mountian biking. Plop the radio down on your workshop shelf while you're in there working and listen in on your local net and then carry it back inside when you head back in. If your situation involves mild portaibility, but maximum desire hear and be heard... this does the trick quite well.

Now That We've Established It's Use Case... Is the Radio Any Good?

For transmitting, the UV-28 Plus's 10w transmit power and included large antenna are pretty legitimate for getting your message out there and heard. I've been experimenting with this handheld radio on local repeaters and for some small group simplex, and thus far the radio really deliveres a very strong and clear transmission. The UV-28+ especialy shines on UHF frequencies, which is where other handhelds start to fall off by comparison as they claim 5w but often drop down to 2w or less. For receiving communication, the radio also shines. Ear to ear with my Yaesu FT-5DR there is no distinguishable difference in audio quality when listening in on my local repeater some 20 miles away. 

Now the PLUS part of the UV-28 Plus isn't just for it's plus sized. With the brick like size of the radio also comes a brick sized battery. At 2200mha, this battery absolutel shines. The UV-28 Plus also features GPS, an additional (get it, plus?) feature over normal radios, which is... useful I suppose? Maybe if you were overlanding and this was your radio and you want to validate where you are I could see the use of GPS, but for my use case where the radio really isn't going all that far... I didn't even bother. The screen on this radio is also plus sized... but... I'll talk about that below!

Other benefits are pretty standard stuff for Baofengs. USB-C charging makes this radio very justifiable to own in an emergency situation where you may find yourself away from your radio..., unlike the my Yaesu radios that will leave me screwed if I didn't happen to have a cord near me should SHTF. There's also the ease of programming with CHIRP, and the fact the same cable that programs this can be used for the UV-5R minis.

There is also the ever present question of "Can this be used for GMRS?". This comes up so often that I wrote an article explaining the big asterisk that comes with any answer I give here, but the answer is YES this is capable of RX and TX on GMRS frequencies. All statements pertaining to the legal, moral, ethical and other considerations involved in doing so are in my asterisks blogged post linked earlier.

Things I didn't like about the radio

Alright let me start out with the first gripe... the screen. Yes, it's larger than your average screen, and a decently good quality color display. For the price it's a standout feature even that leaves my Yaesu in the dust in several key areas... but then there's the above width issue. See how the channel name and the signal level display doesn't go the full width of the screen? Yep, you can't utilize the full screen width. So it's there, but outside of the menus the full width isn't used. Those extra 4-6 characters of chanel name would really help with clarity!

Next gripe... the banks. I'm trying to program the radio with CHIRPS and I love being able to group my channels together into reasonable banks. While I can rename the banks, I can't assign a single channel to a bank arbitrarily, which is a bummer since I primarily operate with tons of programmed channels for repeaters in all of the areas that I like to operate.  You CAN however assign channels to number sections... so 0-100 is 1, 101-200 is 2, etc etc. Not exactly ideal but... it works a bit. Besides the organizational headache of making this work, you also can't assign a channel to multiple banks, which is a bummer as I have a GMRS bank, and then some of the GMRS repeaters fall into banks I name after zones, such as Mt. Hood. I want to be able to scan anyone trying to reach out on Mt Hood... and I don't want to have to enter the same frequency twice, but it does work.

Last up... GPS. Other users have reported issues with the GPS functionality. I'll admit I turned it on, tried it and then promptly turned it off to never faff with again. GPS seems to be an unnescesary novelty for what I do with my life, but you may want it. For the price of this radio, I think it's still a good deal without it, but if you get it and GPS isn't doing it's thing for you you can simply return the radio right away. Easy peasy.

Some Feedback From Others

So there are a few things I simply just don't do with radios. For example, I don't listen to air bands (which use amplitude modulation) nor do I listen to Marine frequencies. Some folks have mentioned issues with listening to air bands, but have reported success with marine however.

Just How Much of A Brick Is This Radio?

The UV28+ awkwardly enters my stable of handheld radios as by far the largest one I have. In the picture above is a Baofeng UV-5R mini (which I highly recommend in my review here), pictured with my hand behind it and next to my Baofeng UV-28 plus. As you can tell, the UV-28+ is staggering huge next to the UV-5R mini, but then again... it is called a mini.

How about we compare it to something a bit more standard like the Yaesu FT5-DR?

Next to the Yaesu FT5-DR handheld, the Baofeng UV-28 continues to tower above it. It's the better part of twice the size of the FT5-DR, bringing it well above your standard handhelds into the territory formerly occupied by handheld radios of the 80s and 90s.

For a bit of context, it's worth mentioning my hand is generally a Large to Extra Large in glove sizes depending on the brand, and in harbor freight nitril work gloves I'm somehow an XXL but let's assume they are sized poorly. Thus what you likely see above are easonable handheld sized radios for most folks with an absolute brick of a radio next to it.

Here Are Some Side-by-Side Size Comparison Photos to the Baofeng UV-5R Mini and the Baofeng UV-22

Now one quick little preface before you compare these radios... they are very clearly for differnt purposes. The mini is in a size category all of it's own, though the UV-22 is a bit more compareable to most other brand mid sized offerings. These are all roughly the same price though (well, you get 2x UV-5R minis for the price, but still) and they're all Baofeng's, so worthy of comparison.