Baofeng UV-3R: Review by Dave, N9EWO

Paul has pointed me to Dave's (N9EWO) review of the, as he call its, the VGC / Baofeng / Magiksun / Comtex / Zastone UV-3R "Micro" Dual Band Handheld Transceiver. You have to scroll half-way down to find the start of the UV-3R info, but it is worth a little mouse work. He has lots of good information.

First, he's found two other brands the radio is sold under - Comtex and Zastone.

Second, he's encountered a few problems with the radio and has some fixes like this one for :

"When we do PC uploads to the UV-3R transceiver using the "409shop's" Universal USB cable,the 5 Khz channel step appear like this [B. 4BK] on the LCD afterwards on some memory channels and/or each VFO . Software version used : 1.01.01.
We cured this bug by going to Menu # 9 after and just rotating through the loop of "steps" once to wash out the weird step entries (done after every upload ).
Needs to be done for both VHF/UHF VFO AND also for EVERY memory channel used to clear these weird entries out and for the display to show properly ."

He also mentions the slow scan times and loud receive audio, but comes to the same conclusion that we all do:

"Cheap, Fun and Useful."