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28 days agoI am a Motorola fan. Used to use their VHF kit back in the day and it took a lot of abuse.
At work we have their averagely rugged yellow things T82 iirc that work out about €35 each
At home, for the goblins, we have a pair of yellow Motos T72 iirc similarly rugged €60 the pair.
Both models have good range and are easy to set up. Work ones do group programming so you program 1 bung the rest on programming mode and transmit the config. Boom. 10 radios programmed identically in less time than manually doing 2.
The T82 extremes are what we use at work… We have 10 of them and, despite being used by generally incompetent users, seem to survive day to day abuse in a high school. We have had them for nearly two years and have no casualties yet. Other schools in the area also use them - with no reported issues.
I know a couple of multi-band, so not specifically pmr, Baofeng users but can’t comment on their ruggedness or longevity other than to say I haven’t heard bad things.
Another popular brand to look at might be Hytera; possibly a bit out of budget for you. We did look at those, instead of cheaper handsets, but price won in the end.