Proper radio choices and reviews that are useful?

[paulears]

If you use radios the requirements are really quite simple.
Do you wish to talk to a specific group of people, or strangers?
Do you wish to have total privacy, moderate privacy, or is privacy not important?
Is range important?
Is price important?
Is reliability and/or warranty important?
Is size/weight an issue?
Do you need features other than voice?

I firmly believe that the mode or technical spec isn't that important now, and answering the questions will predict what radio type is most appropriate.

TETRA, dPMR, DMR, and other labels really don't mean much any longer. I've been shocked by the rubbish Youtube videos intended to help people decide which radios to buy. Opening the boxes and having two radios on a shelf and saying testing testing into one, and recording the sound via a nasty camera mic is not meaningful - especially with digital with the latency making the thing sound ridiculous. When I'm home and have some spare time, I'm going to collect a pile of radios together of all types and do some proper audio tests that makes some kind of sense for comparisons - like maybe recording a number of different receivers listening to the same transmitter - that way the receive audio performance would be audible. I'm thinking about a preset distance from the radio, with every radio recorded the same way. Then the tinny audio of some would be quite obvious. Maybe even putting the results on a website for comparison purposes, rather than individual youtube videos? A few quick tests with wideband pink noise didn't seem to work that well, as they all are quite band limited, so the difference in the noise doesn't seem as marked as a real voice. Might be interesting to try some older radios too, to see if audio quality has changed that much over the years. I can certainly do DMR, dPMR, Baufengs - two or three different ones, Kenwood, Motorola, Yeasu, Icom and maybe a few others if they're still on the shelf when I get home from here. Very few of the youtube videos do anything sensible with range either, I note. Driving to location 'B' and then 'C' is totally pointless. What would make more sense would be to take multiple radios out and try them one by one back to a receiver being recorded, or simply do it locally with attenuators. Probably the distant version makes more sense due to practical things like aerials and how they work in the hand, rather than on the bench? A lot of work, but maybe useful? Comments?

[VintageTin]

Of course objective reviews are important, but why don't just start by creating your website, upload your first review and see if yours is, in fact, any better or any more helpful. If it is, and the feedback is positive, then it is worth pursuing with more reviews.

If it turns out that it is a pain in the backside to do and the results are no more objective than the other reviews out there, leave it at that.

[radiosification]

I agree with VintageTin. Put your money where your mouth is.
I just looked at your profile and it says you're a production manager. Is that for films or something else?
If it's for films, then yes, maybe you would be able to make much better videos than everyone else. We don't all work in the film industry. Some video makers just want to demonstrate a simple thing, such as the fact that two radios from different manufacturers do work together.

Mode and technical spec are very important. If your friend is using a DMR radio and you want to talk to him and go out and buy a dPMR radio, then you won't be happy. If you want to talk on the local DMR repeater, but buy a TETRA radio, you won't be very happy either.
Therefore mode is important.

If your friend is using a radio with a really good receive sensitivity and yours is an old radio that is pretty deaf and you can't hear him (but he can hear you fine), you won't be very happy. If you live near a pager transmitter and buy a cheap Baofeng with awful filtering, you won't be happy when you tune to the local 2M FM repeater and can only hear data noises.
Therefore technical spec is important.

Distance doesn't really mean anything in terms of comparing the range of radios. The actual range you get is completely dependant on the terrain, so unless the viewer wants to use the radio in exactly the same place as you did in the test, it won't give them the same or even similar results. The only thing that stays mostly constant between the reviewer and the viewer is the radio's performance. Comparing radios against each other is the best way to show how well or badly they work without just testing it on test equipment and printing a list of numbers. The manufacturers already do that and people don't take notice, because they want to see how the radio actually works in real life.

And please, use paragraphs. Your post was difficult to understand because it seemed like you just rambled from one point to the next without any clear sense of direction. Separate your points into separate paragraphs so each one can be discussed separately.

[Admiral]

I'm not going to buy, or not buy something on one persons opinion, so lots of shítty youtube vids from different people doing different things, radio blogs and sites like this can add up to form a better idea for me than a major retailers blurb.

Youtube is for the bloke in the street to put up their stuff as well as the big boys.

[paulears]

Sorry for the lack of paragraphs - but difficult using the thing I'm typing on to see what it looks like.

I'm not talking about the technical quality of the videos - and yes, making it would not be a problem - it's just that so many of the videos on youtube totally ignore the info the people searching want. Either streams of technobabble or no technical content whatsoever. Pressing the PTT on a digital radio and letting the thing howl round in a cave like stutter may actually make people who don't know, think that's what radios sound like when they use the word 'vocoder' and people think of ELO Mr Blue Sky or Sparky the magic Piano! My point about range IS about distance - 100% people want to know if radio A performs better than radio B, so wandering around with just one radio means nothing - and THAT is what people see.

(New paragraph)
Now - as to the put your money where your mouth comment. I was asking, politely, I thought if people would be interested. Your rude reply Radiosification just makes me wonder if it's worth even trying if you thought for a moment that I was issuing some kind of a challenge.

There are quite a few videos on youtube that attempt to be helpful, but are totally useless, some that are good, and lots that show the creator knows plenty of information but is poor at getting it across. They are still useful, but the structure could be improved. As it happens, I wasn't even thinking about production standards, simply content. What does a radio sound like? How does it perform against another. Things like Boafengs that have hardly any input filtering work pretty well until connected to aerial systems that have strong off frequency content. If I was buying a radio I'd like useful stuff - objective and not subjective. Radiosification mentioned this - but would people not like to hear the problems? I've no idea what in my post made you become so hostile. It wasn't justified, and I see no reason to be lectured to in this manner. Frankly - your attitude stinks and I wish I'd not even bothered. It will be a lot of work, and you clearly see no value in it. That is fine - don't watch it if I do it. I'm old and perhaps understand how people like to be spoken to better than you.

Lastly - I'm quite aware of the differences, and never even suggested this was an issue - assuming I don't realise the differences was a big mistake. As this is a commercial section, why would you assume I was talking about amateur repeaters? I am not. So wind your neck in, and think before engaging your typing fingers. I didn't come here for snide comments.

Vintage Tin had some good suggestions, and I'll perhaps do it once I finish work here. Sorry for getting grumpy - but I don't like bad attitude.

[radiosification]

Paulears, I apologise that my reply to your original post came off as aggressive. I didn't mean for it to seem that way.

My comment about "Put your money where your mouth is" was also not meant to sound rude but I realise now that maybe it would come off that way. I was simply trying to say go ahead and give it a try. The way you talked about it made it seem as if it is incredibly easy to make quality videos and other people who make videos and don't bother to make them good are a waste of time. So, yes, in some ways it was a challenge but it wasn't meant to sound as aggressive as it came off. It was more of a sort of "I'd like to see some proof that you actually can make videos as good as you say."

A few of your points I just plain disagreed with, and used the structure of paragraph to show why exactly I disagreed. Yes it was very direct but I believe that was the best way to discuss the points. I wouldn't say I was lecturing to you, more just addressing the points you made in a direct way. You are, of course, free to disagree and tell me why, and if you give a good enough reason I will agree with you.

With regards to the points about amateur repeaters, I acknowledge that this is the commercial section, so please replace any instances of amateur repeaters with a commercial repeater when reading that post. I was thinking more with regards to the hobbyist user than to someone who just wants radios to communicate. Was your post more about making videos for people who just want to buy radios that work? Advising the professionals who just want a radio system that works is usually done by other professionals, so there wouldn't be a lot of need for videos on that, however consumers often do like to see videos of products before they buy them. I'm assuming your videos would be targeted at these consumers, of a non-professional level?

I agree that some of the videos are very poor quality, but I still think most of them should be there. There is a limited amount of information on some radios and if somebody wants to make a poor quality video, then it is better than there not being any video. Sometimes it is good just to see the radio on video, so you can see that it works at least before buying it. You can't always trust the information given by the chinese manufacturers in particular.

I didn't at all say that making these videos wouldn't be worth it, and that's not what I think either. I definitely think that people would appreciate good quality videos on radios. I was just disagreeing with some of the details of it.

Sure, you didn't come here for snide comments, but as with everywhere on the internet, you sometimes encounter people who disagree with you and you have to be able to deal with that.

[paulears]

No prob - let's not worry. I'll give you an example of the sort of things people do with videos - there are some (and I actually found one of yours today that showed me one thing I couldn't figure on the MD380 - ironic that I thought!) that have useful stuff in, but some really are awful - have a look at the MD380 Youtube crop. Some clearly have no idea what they are doing at all, and after ten minutes, you are no further forward at all. Some try to hold a camera in one hand, and press buttons with the other, and some seem to do it in the dark. What gets missed is structure, and working out what people actually want. As an example, after finally getting hold of a computer with Vista on it rather than Windows 7 or 8, I finally got to read and write to the two 380s I have here. the code plug everybody recommends was downloaded and I stuck it into one of the radios. What caused me grief was that at first, most of the channels were the NS repeater. I figured if I could understand the amateur system, using them for business clients would be a doddle, being much less complicated. most of the channels had things in, but some were empty. It took ages before I figured out that you had to change zones on the radio to access the other individual entries. In the end, I started with an empty radio and added two things, but only one came up. Then I noticed that changing zone allowed me to see the other one. I had been looking for somewhere in the software that had individual channels mapped against numbers, but of course that isn;t how it works. None of the videos explain this at all, and while plenty of videos explain how to programme, none explain from the point of a user picking the radio up for the first time. I expected somewhere somebody would say "So you have loaded in the codeplug, what comes next? First thing is to connect to your local repeater, and then you will have access to local, regional and world wide contacts. Do it like this..." Nobody has done it.

In one of your videos, you say the performance of the MD380 isn't as good as the Motorolas - but you didn't say what was not so good. You mentioned it isn't waterproof, and you feel dropping it's a bad move - which makes sense, but is it the sensitivity, or power output, or what? Something you didn't like, but didn't say?

This is the kind of thing I personally want to know in a review - here is item 1, here is item 2 - the differences are. I'm thinking about linking a few radios to the same source, and recording each one through the speaker output. This would let you hear the electronics, and then recording each one closely would add in what the speaker can do. Same thing with transmitted audio - one receiver, lots of different transmitters. Perhaps sticking them on a power meter? Lots of comments on some radios having less power than claimed, so that could be handy. Maybe absolute tests of if item A can indeed talk to item B. We hear people talking about vocoders not being compatible or other technical issues, so I'd like people to say this item will talk to this one, but won;t talk to another.

I suppose it's a bit like old Top Gear vs the other car program where one is entertaining to watch and the other informative. Lots of youtube videos are appealing bad and are not entertaining OR informative.

I started hiring radios out in the early 80s - and was a communications advisor for Civil Defence when we weren't friendly with the Russians, and I still have radio clients, although we now spend most of our time doing theatre, TV and a bit of commercial video work. I've still got my old G4 callsign, I have business radio and radio microphone licenses to use and hire, and even do a bit of Marine band work when the phone rings - although I need to do the SRC course again to use marine. Some of my clients now want privacy, hence my enforced move into digital, so while most of the radios I've got coming are without displays, I figured a couple of the 380s would be handy to experiment with - one I'll probably keep for amateur use, the other will be stock. I've also got some dPMR coming too - although the factory contacted me today to tell me they are not dual band as advertised, but just UHF.

So that's the complete story. I'll have to wait until home again to Suffolk in mid January - there are no digital repeaters here in Northern Ireland. I've been experimenting with the digital radios in the theatre, and they're beating the PMR446 Motorola's my production people have - However, there is a big snag with them, and it's an important one. The pulsing output of the DMR radios interferes with the radio mic receivers pretty badly - the stuttering can be heard superimposed on the audio. The analogue PMR446s do not do this - it creates a faint motor boating type noise. I've seen no comments about this anywhere - but pressing the PTT on the FM radios creates a tiny click you can just hear, but the DMRs pulse away. Maybe, the dPMRs will be better, if they arrive in time?