Midland MXT115 GMRS Mobile Review - Why This Might Be The Worst GMRS Radio Or The Best - You Decide!

oh midland once the king of the personal radio communications empire it has been painful to watch you fall and i'm going to share that pain with you my favorite viewer so prepare yourself because like with many of my videos this will be uncomfortable so just lean back breathe through your mouth [Music] and let this happen today due to popular demand i'm going to be reviewing the midland mxt115 gmrs radio 15 what mobile gmrs radio i've gotten more people asking me to review this radio than any radio ever so i'm gonna do it the mxt 115 is an fcc part 95e compliant mobile gmrs radio you do need a gmrs license if you're going to talk on it if you don't already have your gmrs license it's very easy to get there's a link right here to my website with step-by-step instructions including pictures of how to buy your gmrs license there is no test other than maneuvering around the fcc website fork over a few dollars and the fcc will then grant you the privilege of using our free airwaves the price for the midland is 150 it is available now on amazon it's been available for a long time affiliate links below but do not buy this radio until you've watched this entire video because it may not be for you it may not fit your dynamic and exciting lifestyle on the other hand it might i'll talk about who may or may not want this radio because there are issues it has some issues we're going to talk about those issues full disclosure midland did not send me this radio no because they know that i'm gonna rip this thing a new it would be stupid for them to have sent me this radio i paid for this radio with my own money for you channel members that contribute to the channel and those that have sent me bitcoin by the way my bitcoin address is right there that is my bitcoin address feel free to support the channel for those supporting members and people that have sent me bitcoin this is what i do with all that money that you send me i spend it on junk and show you how junky the junk is so you don't have to the midland gmrs radio has been around for a long time as i mentioned midland used to be a good brand not one of those cheap chinese brands boy has that changed so on the box we have some of the features go over some of these features 15 watt radio we're going to test that 15 gmrs channels wikipedia says gmrs has 22 channels this radio only has 15 channels 1 through 7 and channels 15 through 22 every radio every one of those cheap chinese radios i've ever tested or used or looked at has full 22 channels now some of those radios the higher powered mobile ones can't transmit on channels 8 through 14. but they can all listen so the reason for that is those are the old frs channels or something you can only transmit at very low power most mobile radios can't go that low in power so they just don't transmit at all midland has decided to just remove those channels completely strike one ten weather channels those are the regular noaa channels oh privacy codes we can talk in private with 142 privacy codes right no strike two midland continues to call these privacy codes privacy codes when they're not private at all if you want to learn more about what a privacy code is and isn't watch that video that i just did about privacy codes and why they are not private in any way special features eight gmrs repeater channels we're going to talk about that that is also an issue with this radio programmable squelch channel scan weather scan oh a manual squelch mono okay so none of this stuff matters to most people 12 volt power cord with car adapter that is actually a nice feature if you don't want to do a permanent installation and then blah blah blah everything that's in the package we will go over that so what you will receive in the box when you spend your 150 dollars you will get this tiny user manual with a quick start guide hidden in it you will receive a microphone mount with a sticky sticker on the back to stick it anywhere a couple of screws for mounting i guess that's for the microphone mount the power cord that goes into the back of the radio with a lighter attachment a handy feature if you don't want to permanently install the radio in your car this radio comes with an antenna it is a dinky little antenna seven inches when measured from the base always measure from the base with a 19 foot cord and a standard pl 259 connector [Music] you will receive oh that's a magnetic magnetic base so that sticks to any metal surface like your foot of your car so you just stick that on and you're good to go it comes with this little metal sticky which is a peel-off sticker that's metal that will attach to that in case you don't have something metal to attach it to you can stick that on and attach it but the radio requires a metal surface to act as a ground plane so for example if you have a jeep and you stick this metal sticky on top of the fiberglass roof and stick it on the antenna is not going to work very well because it needs a metal surface to bounce those signals off into space you will receive a microphone with the rj45 type jack that plugs in we're going to talk a lot more about this microphone we're going to talk about a lot of this stuff because midland and you will receive the radio the mxt 115 15 watt radio has a mounting bracket i didn't even take it off which comes on and off that's this part here and the power plug which goes into the other side of the thing it is a small radio a lot of people like that four and a half well let's say right at five inches at its widest four and a half at the length the case is metal it acts as a heatsink and it does get very warm very quickly when you're not even transmitting i don't know if that's an issue but my other cheap chinese radios don't do that on the front you've got the jack for the microphone you have a usb charging plug that you can plug your phone or whatever into to charge up off of i suppose that's nice you have this tiny screen just under two inches you can customize the screen it's got a few different colors couple of control buttons on and off power on the rear again the power plug so239 antenna connector that's what the antenna plugs into and it's got an external speaker plug i almost forgot that in the box you will also receive a midland sticker for all the chumps that like to put stickers all over their vehicles and advertise for other companies first very important feature that this radio does have is a roger beep option if you want to learn more about the roger beep and why it is the most important setting of your radio watch that video right there now the first issue that i ran into is that the midland i could not get to operate with either of my dc power supplies i've got two power supplies one that has a female socket for the cigarette lighter adapters would not work and then i've got a high amperage high wattage dc power converter that i use on every radio i've ever gotten does not work i thought the radio was dead but when i plugged it into the lighter on one of the jeeps it worked fine i don't know why that is maybe you electrical engineers can tell us why because i can't get it to work here on my techmat i'm going to have to refer to some b-roll footage that i shot in the jeep as i'm talking so let's start with the antenna i mentioned it comes with so this is one of the good things about this radio it come it comes with everything that you need to turn it on and start using it the cigarette lighter plug so that you don't have to cut wires and mounted and drill holes and all that plug it right in the cigarette lighter and then it's got the antenna 19 foot cord plugs right into the back of the radio now i did not expect much out of this antenna this cable it's not even cable it's like a 14 gauge or 16 gauge wire i'm surprised that any signal actually even makes it out of the antenna but it does it works decently when i measured the swr on this antenna i expected it to be through the roof i was surprised it was a 1.51 to 1 just by sticking it on the fender metal fender of the wife's jeep so the antenna is not bad it does work surprisingly well another important test was the power output i used my handy dandy favorite little swr and power meter to check the power output on high power it was outputting 13 watts and on low power 4 watts so power output is pretty much right in there where it should be supposed to be 5 and 15 4 and 13 isn't bad now the range another important factor how far can you talk on this radio with the little baby antenna sitting on the fender of my wife's jeep in the garage with the door closed i was able to talk to a friend of mine three miles away and he was able to hear me fairly clearly three miles away through the garage he sent a little video of what that sounded like so at three miles away it's fairly clear fairly decently strong signal i have another friend that was listening at the same time 10 miles away he was able to hear me he said it was very low and very staticky but he heard me 10 miles away i couldn't receive him he was only transmitting on a 4 or 5 watt handheld i was transmitting at the full 15 watts so far a good all-in-one radio decent range decent little antenna not so bad so now let's talk about how midland has forgotten how to make good radios first of all this radio now i couldn't find any specs about is it wideband or narrowband i looked i can't find any specifications i'm sure they're out there somewhere somebody will find them and link below to confirm but this radio appears to be narrow band only and i think it's odd that nowhere do they put in any of the sales information in the manual and the specs on amazon or on their website they don't say whether or not it is wideband or narrowband so what that means is most gmrs radios are wideband i'm not gonna do a whole video on wideband i should do a video on wideband versus narrowband because it causes much confusion but basically what this means is most radios gmrs radios are wideband we're all talking we're receiving wideband the bandwidth that we're talking in is this wide this high okay lowest volume highest volume wideband means that that volume level is half of wideband you can still talk to other radios the other radios hear you but if you're talking on a narrow band radio to a wide band radio because the volume of the narrow band radio is less you're only going to hear 50 percent volume no matter how loud you scream and talk if someone is listening to you on a wide band radio your volume is going to sound low if you talk to another narrow band radio it's going to sound fine because the highest it's because it's they're both narrow band basically what it boils down to is most radios are wide band all those cheap chinese junk radios are wideband when you're talking on the midland which is narrowband to a wideband radio everybody's going to be saying what did you say i can't hear you they'll hear you but it's going to be low and they're going to be struggling and they're going to get pissed off listening to you not a huge deal if you're talking to another midland radio or another narrow band radio you wouldn't notice it's only when you talk to any of the other radios in the world that are wideband that you'll have that low volume issue narrowband sucks now you notice that the screen was relatively small it was only like two inches by half an inch tall and it seems to be made out of that 1980s lcd watch technology you know with the little squares and there's only a few of them so reading it even though it's bright and it's clear and you can see it from far away the characters are so low resolution it's like trying to read chinese written by an ancient egyptian it just it's hard to read it's probably the worst screen that i've seen at least the worst screen i can remember ever seeing all the other cheap chinese radios have high resolution screens so you can actually see and make sense of what's going on as i mentioned only 15 channels why midland why all those other radios they can't transmit on all of the channels but midland has decided to just eliminate them why midland why 8 repeater channels okay real gmrs radios let you talk on repeaters before you can use repeater channels you have to go into the menus and turn on the repeater option only radio i've ever run into none of these cheap chinese radios you have to do that you just turn them on and start talking on repeater channels not a big deal once you enable the repeater option those repeater channels are there i suppose that if you never plan on using repeater channels it helps to keep things simple just by leaving them off so for some people this might actually be a good thing but to go in and have to turn that feature on as a pain in the why midland why repeater tone ctcss dcs privacy tones as midland likes to call them privacy tones are not private in any way but you need those tones to connect to a repeater and this shitty screen only displays two characters at a time two characters for the tones now most tones many the majority of tones are three and four characters long for example the most common tone ct css tone 141.3 is 141.3 you need five characters this only shows two characters so as you're going through the knobs to get your tones you have to go to their lookup table so that you know that zero three refers to ct css tone 141.3 so they provide that in their manual now i don't know if you can read that i needed a magnifying glass to see that i'm sure it's available online you could print it out try looking those up when you're out traveling and you need to connect to a repeater good luck with that the other issue regarding tones and repeaters is that this radio will not do split tones now i don't want to get into a whole discussion about what split tones are it means two different tones one to receive one to transmit many repeaters don't use split tones so it's not a big deal my repeater that i run oh i built my own repeater if you want to see how i did that watch that video my repeater has a transmit tone and a receive tone i can't use this radio on my own repeater but all my cheap chinese radios cheap junk chinese radios they all support split tones the other issue is that it does not support different tones for different channels so if your repeater channel one uses tone xyz you put that tone in now that tone is on all the channels as far as i could find now maybe there's something in the book that i was doing it wrong it's possible using this radio with any for any serious repeater usage is just it's impractical why why midland why now let's talk about [Music] the microphone talk here push the button here to transmit and it's got these up and down buttons for changing the channel up and down or scrolling through menu options you must use the microphone to change any settings to program the radio at all another big problem that i ran into is that when you're holding the microphone and you're pushing the up or down button to program to go through the list so let's say you're going to add a dces tone there's hundreds of tones you can only screw scroll through them one click at a time if you try to do it quicker it still only goes very slow you can press and hold it and that goes almost slower so to enter dcs tone 273 took five minutes just to scroll from zero up to whatever the number was for that tone when you're holding the microphone clicking up if you accidentally press the push to talk button with your thumb or any part of your hand it then cancels out whatever you're doing and you have to start over every time i tried to change something i had to do it multiple times because my big hands sausage hands kept pushing there so really to program it without accidentally touching that button you have to use two hands and very gingerly and carefully do it that way it's very difficult to do it with one hand now one thing that i did notice with this mic is that it feels very sturdy it feels this is probably the best feeling mic that i've ever used it it feels nice so i got to wondering why does it feel so nice every all the cheap chinese radios feel like air so i investigated i got my screwdriver and opened it up to see what was in there that was making it so substantial feeling when we open it up what we find let's see what we find okay so we've got our little circuit board here that's really all that's needed some wires but look here wait it's got weights in the microphone this is a magnetic screwdriver oh it sort of sticks maybe it's steel i can barely feel it so it's not lead that's what makes it feel so solid they stuck some steel plates in there i'm not sure how i feel about this i'm conflicted it are they cheating us are they lying to us are they trying to make us think that it's a much more substantial and better microphone than it is by sticking steel plates in there is there some functionality that i'm not aware of that putting steel plates in there gives the microphone a better sound or i don't think so but i don't know i'm not a microphonologist someone will leave a comment and let us know i find it very odd that midland has decided to put steel plates in the microphone to apparently make it feel heavier it does feel nice but i can't help feeling that i've been lied to or tricked in some way it makes me feel dirty inside so i'm curious what you think about the steel plate filled microphone leave a comment below if you know why midland has decided to put steel plates inside their microphone let us know why or let us know would you feel cheated does this is this a good thing or a bad thing i don't know i have no opinion i feel dirty inside so who is this radio for if you are a serious gmrs user if you're what we refer to as a gmrs dork like me it's not a bad thing you should be proud then this radio is not for you if i were to buy this radio being the gmrs dork that i am i would send it back immediately so if you're looking for a real gmrs radio do not buy this radio it might be a great choice for somebody that just needs a radio that they can quickly use throw the antenna up on the roof talk to whoever they need to talk to for buying or driving across country or whatever and then when they're done they can just wad it all back up and throw it back in the trunk and not worry about it if that's the kind of radio you're looking for this is a great choice is it worth 150 dollars so you can get a radio oddity radiody db 20g which is very similar in size has the same cigarette lighter and everything that's only 120 or 30 dollars it's a few dollars less but that does not come with the antenna or the cable it is more of a real gmrs radio that you can easily connect to multiple repeaters and do all the real gmrs radio things but if what you're wanting is that simplicity take it out of the trunk plug it in stick the antenna up on top use it when you're done wad it up throw it back under the seat or in the trunk then that extra 20 or 30 dollars might be worth it to you so overall not a terrible choice as long as you know what you're getting and as long as you have decided that it is the right radio for you and your personal lifestyle if you have any questions or comments maybe i did something wrong maybe i missed something in the tiny instruction manual you couldn't blame me i am only human leave a comment below let me know if i missed anything if you have questions leave those as well i'll do my best to answer if i'm not able to answer someone will come along and they will try to answer and they will probably get it wrong so bear that in mind thank you for watching and remember if you're looking for the best

Channel: NotaRubicon Productions

Views: 39,047

Keywords: midland mxt115, midland gmrs review, midland gmrs mobile, midland 15 watt, gmrs mobile radio review, best gmrs

Id: PuxRpJzvPWM

Length: 22min 24sec (1344 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 20 2021