GMRS Mobile Radio Showdown: Midland MXT275 vs Retevis RA86 Which one is better for #overlanding ?

[Music] I am the best gmrs mobile radio there is you have a loose transistor if you believe that what did you say to me you hurt me what's up everybody we're out in a beautiful spot in Stanislaus National Forest today because we're going to be testing out some gmrs mobile radios in my right hand I have my trusty Midland MXT 275. I've had this thing for a little over a year and it's always been reliable and faithful in my left hand I have a read of this ra-86 which Mobile Radio will reign supreme let's find out before we get to the test let's compare some of the features and specs of the two radios so I put together this handy dandy little list here and the right of this has 20 watts of power in high power mode and 5 watts and low the Midland 15 watts in high and I'm not sure how much and low they don't advertise that but I'm guessing five Watts now both have 22 channels and eight repeater channels the Privacy codes is where it differs a little bit so with the red of this you have 50 CTC SS codes and 210 DCS codes and Midland kind of I guess for lack of a better term dumbs it down for people they just have their version of 142 privacy codes both have NOAA weather both have dual speakers and an external speaker Jack and you can change the backlight colors on both but the red of this only has four background light colors and the Midland has seven Midland also includes a USBC charging port on the base unit and a headset Jack on the mic unit which the red of this has neither of those also full disclosure redovus did send me the ra 86 for testing and to make a video review the Midland I bought with my own money but renovus is not paying me for my opinion as always my opinions are my own let's take a look at the mobile gmrs radio that retiver sent me this is the model ra 86 I haven't even had time to open it yet so let's take a look together when we got a manual and the first thing that really stands out is the handheld right here that has all the controls on the front and pull that out so we have the actual radio unit right here and we've got a power cord with a cigarette lighter adapter the little antenna that it comes with that has a magnetic base mounting bracket looks like some big thumb screws for the mounting bracket and a little clip I'm assuming so that you can mount this and then hang the uh mic right here and then we've got some little plates for you to stick the magnetic antenna to that's it all right guys so we're gonna test and compare the two mobile gmrs radios right now as best as I can I don't have any like testing equipment or would I know how to use that and I'm not a radio expert nor am I a radio amateur even I'm Just Your Average end user that wants things to work and work as simply as possible but we're going to compare these two see how they do for the duration of this trip so far for two days now I've been using the redovus r86 and it's been just as good as the Midland one I've had for a year now um don't really notice any difference in performance but we're gonna try to compare them by seeing how far before we lose contact with my buddy behind me so he's gonna head on down the road here from where I'm parked currently and we're going to start with the Midland MXT 275 he has the same exact Mobile gmrs Radio as this and he's just gonna head on down the road like I said and as soon as he loses contact with me he'll record the GPS coordinates and then we'll use that determine like range basically and then we're going to run the same test again except I'll have the red of this ra86 plugged in instead what's interesting is that the redovus has the same exact power plug as the mid length and obviously the same antenna connection so it's really easy for me to swap back and forth with them um so yeah let's see how this goes so this is my buddy John's rig and as you can see he's got the Midland magnetic antenna mounted on his hood it's the one that the MXT 275 comes with and I will be using this 33 inch 5 decibel gain whip antenna when we're testing both radios out all right so I just switched radios now John found the point where we were unable to communicate with each other he dropped a pin for GPS coordinates so we'll take a look at that later but I swapped to the redovus ra 86 now so I'm going to check it with John make sure he can still hear me where he's currently stopped hey John do you copy do you copy like I'm getting a little bit ecstatic from you but you hear me more clearly than earlier with the Midland [Applause] that's interesting okay so let's um why don't you drive away from me when it's safe for you to do that and we're gonna see if we can get any little extra distance with me using this mobile radio versus the Midland one earlier so John do you copy do you copy I cannot hear you I repeat I cannot hear you do you copy all right looks like we lost touch again maybe we squeezed another couple hundred feet out of that we'll see we'll see when he uh gets me the GPS coordinates here are the results from our test I'm using Gaia GPS to help illustrate what's going on and we have GPS coordinates recorded by John during this test this red marker is our starting location where I stayed the entire time and John drove down this forest service road until he hit this blue marker when we lost contact when I was using the MXT 275 he was able to get a little bit further down the road to this yellow marker when I was using the redovis ra-86 keep in mind John was using the same equipment the entire time for this test he was using the Midland MXT 275 plus the included antenna whereas I was switching between the two radios using that whip antenna that I showed you earlier for both radios so let's take a look at the range difference between the two radios here first the Midland so that blue line is a straight shot from our starting location to where we lost contact and that's a distance of 1.37 miles with some elevation change as you can see and quite a lot of trees in between so this is a pretty good real world test of being in the mountains where you don't have line of sight you're going through trees and hills and things like that so not a bad distance for radio contact but we got a little more distance out of the redovus ra-86 so let's check that one so this yellow line is a straight shot from our starting location to where we lost contact and that's a distance of 1.81 miles now again with some elevation change obviously same trees in the way things like that but a pretty decent Improvement in range overall and the only difference between these two radios really is that extra five watts of power from the red of SRA 86 I mean that's my only explanation for the improved range all right so the bidland MXT 275 there's the display screen and it's enough information to know like what channel you're on and if you have a privacy code enabled or not if we take a look at the menu everything is in shorthand code and I don't change settings often enough to remember what these things mean so I'd have to go through the manual again and take a look if I need to ever change anything again that doesn't happen very often but when it does like I don't know what I'm doing uh there's a big difference between this and the red of this radio in terms of the menu and I'll show you the red rid of this radio in a moment both radios have NOAA weather and I'm not in an area where I can actually receive no weather signal right now uh otherwise they're very similar radios which you'll see in a moment the Midland does have a mic like headset input on the side of the uh I don't even know what to call this of the handheld unit here and the control unit down here or whatever that's called has a extra little USB C plug down here for you to charge something off of again I've been using these for over a year now and it's always been reliable I have no real complaints about it it's a perfectly good radio for my needs but let's compare it to the Reddit best now let's look at the redovis ra-86 about the same amount of information on the screen in their normal use but if you go into the menu like I was kind of mentioning earlier when we were looking at the Midland these are like oh my gosh actual words not like shorthand code that I can never remember and again I don't change the settings very often but when I do like I want to know what I'm changing without having to flip through a manual every time to figure out what I'm doing so to me this is super useful it just kind of makes sense otherwise the radios are very similar other than those two features that I mentioned on the Midland where it has the Jack for the headset and that little additional USBC charger on that control unit down there those features I don't really use so that's not a deal breaker for Me Maybe for you um they both have NOAA weather and yeah privacy codes and all that good stuff um one distinction is that it seems after doing some research again I'm not a radio expert right that every manufacturer calls privacy code something different first of all and secondly they all use like a different I guess the best way to put it is nomenclature um for example on the red of this I have it set to dcs99 for a privacy code uh on the Midland it's 77 and I don't know if there's any kind of standardization on that but the redovis manual does show you like a little guide on how to I guess translate between some of the different more popular manufacturers so that the radios can talk to each other and that's what I had to do in order to get the red of this to talk to my buddies MXT 275 um they have a really similar radios like the handset looks almost identical in a lot of ways let me grab the Midland One um I mean the middle one's a little bit bigger and heavier but pretty identical and then even the control units like I said they use the same exact power plug I don't know if that's a standardized thing um obviously the antenna connection is standardized though and size wise almost the same the red of this being slightly larger all around but pretty close in both what I can tell quality and ease of use other than the menu system so let's find out which one I like better okay so what is the final verdict between my current Midland MXT 275 and this new to me redovis RA 86 we kind of looked at the differences between the two kind of compared the performance between the two and you know what really wins it out for me is the fact that I can understand the menu on the red of SRA 86 remember the Midland had like the little shorthand like two letter code for whatever setting you're trying to change which I never remember what they are and the ra 86 menu had like you know full-on words that are easily understood by anybody the addition of the headset Jack and that little USBC plug on the front of the control unit of the Midland um I never use those features maybe those are deal breakers for you but I don't use those two features so the red of this wins it out for me remember rid of this did not pay me for my opinion my opinions are my own all they did was send me the product to test and review for them so there you have it guys you can take your pick if your whole group uses Midland there's no reason to not go middling but if you've got a choice this would be my pick thank you guys so much for watching hope you'll join me for the next one and always remember destinations don't matter the journey matters Journey with a redovus radio so I've been back from the trip for a couple days now and just to show you guys that I'm not full of it when I said I would pick the renovus there she is permanently installed in my rig I'll show you the NOAA weather where I can get a signal when we're up in the mountains there every eight seconds [Music] all right so I got it mounted down there where the Midland used to be and she is good to go for our next adventure and there's the old Midland that I ripped out there's the mount right underneath so anybody want to buy an old Midland MXT 275

Channel: GGG4Runner

Views: 3,693

Keywords: vlog, overland, ovelanding, camping, outdoors, nature, 4Runner, mental health, depression, the great outdoors

Id: 0K6AiHv_zsI

Length: 14min 48sec (888 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 05 2023