We get asked a lot of questions, either by phone, email or over on our two way radios forum. One question that comes up a lot is which consumer FRS and GMRS two way radio "feels" the most solid and durable. We all know this is rather subjective, but there was a conversation here about this just the other day and I thought some of you might like to know what we think.
Now, most people would never put their radios through the kind of abuse that it would take to break them. They are not that fragile and are made to be dropped and knocked around a bit.
At the top of our list (and big, tough and heavy) are Garmin Radios, though Danny thinks they should instead be called Awesome Garmin GPS Map Devices that Just Happen to be Very Good GMRS Radios as Well. (Garmin, feel free to call us for permission to use that). They are heavy radios so they might weigh a bit too much for some people. They are also one of the coolest bits of tech we carry. If you spend a lot of time camping and hunting you should seriously consider a set just for the GPS functionality. They remind me more of commercial grade radios in quality.
Next would be Midland radios. Sure, they are boxy, but they have a nice heft without being too heavy and are very tough. There is something about a simple "works no matter what" design we like.
Cobra, Motorola, Uniden and TriSquare get lumped together. While they are far from fragile, they just do not have the same "solid" feeling. Uniden radios do feel a bit tougher that the others. I would not want to drop any of these radios too often on pavement, though. A few of the Motorola radios feel like I could squeeze them and break the shell even.
All of this is, once again, very subjective. In fact, many of you could easily argue that we are crazy and wrong. Also, none of these are as durable or tough as a commercial grade radio. Most consumer radios use a thin plastic shell and plastic frame. Many commercial radios have a shatter proof shell and a metal frame. That is also one of the reasons there is a price difference. Consumer radios are designed to be a compromise between having a lot of features, durability and price. And in truth, most of the time they do a very good job balancing all of this.
