CRYSTAL UHF Radios

[blek]

Hi all

Just wondering if anyone has had (or heard of), any experiences with the Crystal Brand radios? I know these wont even hold a candle to ICOM but it would mainly be used for communicating on the beach, convoys and listing to truckie chat.

Their specs seem ok but Im having a hard time finding any reviews or user reports.

Cheers

[st_za]

I am guessing that they are Kenwood or Yaesu (rarely Icom) reference designs that are being made by Baofeng, Wouxun or Puxing for CrystalM (their looks remind me a lot of Baofeng models). That means the radio is usually a pretty solid design, if a little old, with good construction but the software and electronics components are lower quality.

I recently played with the CrystalM pro handheld and came away impressed. There doesn't seem to be much else at that price point with similar features, the most useful being auto-squelch. It still can't match the big brands for scanning speed and couldn't match my Wouxun KG-UV8D for receiver sensitivity although the antenna might be a different gain (the owner had a hissy-fit when I wanted to unscrew the antenna to check the gain that is usually printed on the base).