BTECH GMRS-20V2 20W Compact Mobile GMRS Radio, IP67 Waterproof Control Mic, 200 Customizable Channels, Repeater Ready, Clean Vehicle or Base Install, VHF/UHF Scanner, NOAA Weather & FM Receiver

This radio is perfect for my needs. Even with a stubby Midland antenna on a mag mount, I can easily reach a repeater 23 miles away from my home city—no issues at all. The radio is tiny, which makes it easy to mount just about anywhere, and the fact that all the controls are built into the mic is a huge convenience, especially in tight setups. Another feature I really love is the ability to customize the text colors on the display—it’s a nice touch that adds a bit of personalization and makes it easier to read at a glance. There are a few minor downsides. The mic cable is a little short, but that hasn’t been a problem since I have the unit mounted close by. The screen brightness isn’t adjustable, so it can be pretty bright at night. Also, the menu system isn’t the most intuitive and takes some getting used to. Overall, though, for the price, it’s hard to beat the combination of performance, size, and features this little radio offers. Highly recommended.

The radio is what I expected after reading and watching various reviews on Amazon and YouTube. The menus are very similiar to the Boafeng/Btech handhelds. Programing is easy if you use CHIRP. You can copy and past frequencies from your other radios in the 20V2 img file. The only issue I seem to have discovered is the kill function. I was going through the settings for the radio in CHIRP and disabled all DTMF transmit and receive. When I upload the new settings back to the radio, it is killed or locked. The easy but annoying fix is to image your radio as soon as you get it out of the box and save the original image as a separate file. I can reload the original settings back via CHIRP and then update the channel line up. All is well as long as I dont tweak with the DTMF settings in CHIRP and upload the changes to the radio. CHIRP has updated twice since I first received the radio. I suspect the kill issue could be a bug in the CHIRP software with one of the recent updates. Time will tell.

I haven't completely made up my mind on this radio yet. For the cons, I don't know what Btech was thinking with the mic hanger. I can't see it being that hard to make a regular mic hanger for this radio. I find myself fiddling with the mic all the time to get it back on the hanger. Next, using the squelch button for switching back and forth from channel to volume is just a bad idea. The mic hole is right where you hold the mic, so it sometimes covers the hole. The pros, I tested the power output, and got 26 watts on this 20 watt rated radio. It mounts out of the way as all of the controls are on the mic. The mic speaker is loud enough to hear. It was easy to program from chirp. I get good sound quality reports from others. If you can get past the couple of cons, it seems to be a good radio. The manual is great as well.

ZERO STARS. This is junk, the aux speaker dont work, it turns off and back on by its self, the static is ear busting but impossible to hear talking. This was the first day, first talking, first use.

I like its size and design. I wish it had a longer mic cord, for one thing. It really needs a front end (filtering) as it picks up all kind of RF garbage and adjacent channel interference that a good radio would not. Also, wish it had a standard external speaker jack rather than the dumb thing that supposedly allows you to connect it to your car stereo system. That kind of cutsey-poo stuff may impress a few techie geeks but is not really practical given that you lose your speaker when the car engine is turned off. It does seem to transmit decently with a quarter wave whip on top of the car with decent signal and audio reports for ranges used at.

BTech's sleek and very compact GMRS 20V2 mobile radio is an awesome radio. This radio is super compact, easy to install, portable, and most of all, it is very easy to program and use. Make sure and purchase the programming cable when you order it. Included instructions are very straightforward and easy to understand. I have several radios, and these are the best instructions I have received with a GMRS radio. Download the latest software download of "Chirp", and you can program it. I have been an avid offroader , kayaker, backpacker, etc, and wish I had a radio like this years ago. The Btech 20V2 can be used out of a back pack with a power source and antenna as well. So many uses due to it being easy, compact, and especially it's 20 watt output. Will mount in any vehicle it is so compact. I use mine in my Jeep Wrangler. Absolutely love the radio! Nice job BTech!!

Update: August, 2025 The third radio ( second replacement unit) is holding up so far. It sees occasional use, and so far it's working fine. The warranty on the original unit purchased is now over, so it it dies, it's going into the trash. We'll see. Updates as needed, but the bottom line is you didn't want to trust your life to one of these things. Update: April 2025 After roughly 7 months of ownership, the radio lost its ability to transmit. There was no warning, and it still received fine. But a test with my SWR meter confirmed it: there was no output to the antenna on transmit. Since it was still within the first year, it was under warranty. I went through the process on BTECH's website to obtain an RMA. I had to supply them with my original Amazon invoice. After about a day, the RMA came back with authorization to ship. I boxed it up, sending only the main unit and microphone per their instructions, then sent it in via USPS Priority Flat Rate. It arrived at their location in South Dakota after 3 days. I then received word that the replacement was being sent out. I think it took about a week to arrive via UPS. I reinstalled the radio in my new vehicle, which replaced the one I was originally using it in when I wrote the review below. It took me about half an hour to pull the center console out of my new Ram and get everything connected back up. Got good transmit reports on a couple of different repeaters with the replacement radio, and I thought I had put this all behind me. Until I powered the radio down. With the replacement radio supposedly "off", the speaker emits static constantly. Not just a little soft static; more like the static you get when you turn on an old TV and get the white noise if there isn't a station broadcasting on that channel. I'm too late for a refund, so I'm now going through the RMA process again. I will likely have to pay -- again -- to ship the defective unit to South Dakota. I will likely be without my radio for more than a week as they go through the process. And I don't know what I'm going to get when I get it back. Maybe it will be perfect for the next 10 years. Maybe it will last 10 months, 10 days, or 10 minutes like this replacement did. I don't know. This same radio unit is available under different "brands" if you can call them that. More cheaply than through BTECH. I'm cool with paying a little more for the BTECH unit if it means they'll stand behind it. But if this is what standing behind it consists of, well, I'm not so sure it's worth it. If the next replacement flops, I'll probably buy a Midland, although their feature set stinks and the cost is stupid high. Having a "one hander" with a remote main box really happens to work well for me, so I want to stay with that form factor. More updates as they become possible. Original review is below. ***** I bought this after being disappointed by a Radioddity RA-86, which had very poor receiver performance. This radio is not perfect: adjusting the volume is too fiddly, the user interface is needlessly complex because it supports triple-watch, and the volume is not loud enough for some people using them in side-by-sides or in open Jeeps. (The volume is fine in a regular, enclosed vehicle.) This is why I've labeled this radio as 'quirky' in the review title. Installation? You don't really need to install it. I stuffed it into a center console map pocket in my Ram 1500, plugged it into the cigarette lighter socket, and ran the antenna cable out a door opening. Total time invested, about 5 minutes. The main unit is not super small like the RA-86, but it is still very compact and it will fit in a lot of places without drilling holes and mounting it. I did mount the microphone to the dash once I decided that I was keeping the unit, but that was a couple of self-tapping screws. The included adhesive mounting tape did not last a week.. Use? It's very much like a Baofeng GMRS walkie talkie. The firmware is a little different because it supports triple-watch, which I don't use, but it will seem very familiar otherwise. There are a lot of needless color configurations you can change for the display if you wish. The unit is computer programmable, which I recommend you take advantage of. At the time I got the radio the CHIRP people hadn't come up with a profile for it; that may have changed by now. (Update: it is now CHIRP programmable.) The microphone, which is how you control the radio, as there are no controls on the main unit, is somewhat larger than the usual radio mike, but not unwieldy. It does have a non-standard mounting that uses a hook rather than the usual button, which is weird but it works. I've coupled my radio with a Nagoya mag-mount antenna and am getting good signal reports. Audio through the microphone speaker is adequate but the unit would benefit from an external speaker. You will want to study the user manual to figure out what all of the buttons do. Like I say, the mike is quirky and overly complex, but usable. For what I paid, this radio is worthwhile. It has traveled with me for less than 10,000 miles, however, and vibration can kill inexpensive mobile units. We'll see how this one holds up. In the meantime, it's a better unit than the ultra-cheap Radioddity, and it works for what I need it to do.

So far this radio is working great. I really like how easy it is to read the screen on the handset, with the text being large enough for old eyes as well as the ability to control some of the color on some of the text to make it even more clear. The benefit of having the controls on the handset is great so I could mount the main body of the radio below my seat and still have all the controls visible and available from the driver's position. Make sure you also order a programing cable for this radio since it doesn't come with one, if you are going to try to hit repeaters that use CTCSS tones (PL codes); while you can program it all from the handset, it sure makes it easier to be able to program repeaters using Chirp (and a programming cable). While it is rated as a 20 watt radio, I was getting about 17 watts on my SWR meter, which is certainly good enough for the purpose.