Edward (KO6DVZ) and I were texting about DMR last week when he mentioned that the Baofeng DM-32UV was presently $50. Fifty dollars. For an analog-DMR hybrid. I thought okay, this I must see 🤔
A Note on Cheap Chinese Radios (CCRs)
Now before the judgements about "cheap Chinese radios" (henceforth called CCRs) come: yes, this can be a controversial topic among amateur radio operators who are angry for any of the following reasons:
- Previous scandals around Baofeng using one FCC-approved identifier to then produce and import a ton of radios that did not meet spec (shady!)
- Age-old reports of Baofengs creating spurious emissions (not ideal!)
- We spent a lot of money on our beloved Japanese or 'domestic' radios and need our expenditures to be validated (Sunk Cost Fallacy is not objective nor science, sorry!) As a Yaesu, Motorola, and ICOM user, I'm here to tell you that you can't let this one hold you back from trying new things 🙃
Here's another reason: some of us live in this fantasy land where the USA will assert itself as the innovation and manufacturing powerhouse it may have once been, so we're annoyed by cheap foreign clones of anything. For example, the model I'm writing about is a totally shameless clone of the Motorola APX-800XE (specifically the 3.5 Model)
For me, this isn't some USA pride type thing. I think every developed country should be as innovative and self-reliant as possible to reduce waste, give consumers more choices, and employ as many folks as possible. Ideally there would be a company making great amateur radios right here in Los Angeles. That would be my go-to place! One can dream...
Anyway, while CCRs may deserve their bit of controversy, this radio appears to have its own FCC approval, and it would seem the spurious emissions are in check these days:
Quick-and-dirty analysis done with my TinySA
By the way, the Baofeng was outputting its max of 10 watts there, so sort of surprising how well it held together on the chart
Now with all of that out of the way, let me delight you with some info about this radio
The Good
I've italicized items below I think make this radio especially good for emergency preparedness:
- It does DMR and analog
- It comes with a lot of stuff: a charging base, USB-C power supply, belt clip, hand mic, and three antennas
- The battery life is great, and it's charged via USB-C
- Four programmable buttons: two side keys and P1/P2 on the face. One can assign these to just about anything like next/previous memory group, view current GPS data, start/stop scanning, etc etc.
- You can program each of these buttons for long and short presets, for a total of 8 custom functions
- The interface and buttons are all totally intuitive
- It feels good in the hand
- NOAA monitoring. Like a dedicated weather radio, it can listen to NOAA's VHF broadcasts for the 1050 Hz tone, and then alert. Side note: did you know that's one of the 3 common ways NOAA stations 'wake up' devices? Check it out:
- It's (allegedly) a 10W radio. Pretty powerful for a handheld
- The scanning function is good on both analog and DMR
- Supports APRS (in DMR mode only)
- Fast GPS/GNSS TTFF (Time To First Fix) ~30 seconds outdoors. (Indoors ~75 seconds, 18" from a window)
- Totally negligible but appreciated: it comes in various colors including clear (hello, '90s) and one can set a custom startup image as shown higher up on this page
The Bad
- It comes with three antennas that seem to be... okay. My advice is to upgrade the antenna. Any dual-band (SMA-Female) antenna will do
- Build quality is pretty good but I'm not sure it would survive a drop on a hard-packed dirt trail or similar. Time will tell
- No weather-proofing
- The display can be hard to see when outdoors. We took it on a hike and I immediately regretted changing the font colors from white-on-black
- The programming software is Windows-only
- Subjective mostly to SOTA activators, but now in 2026 we're all modding those Quansheng handhelds to do 2M sideband given the 2026 SOTA challenge. This cannot be modded to do sideband. No fault, but worth mentioning
Other
If you like to text, say, friends or weather services over DMR, typing on this radio will remind you of an old phone, pre-T9 Text Prediction. It doesn't pair with a phone or anything, you need to either use canned messages you've made or painstakingly type out your texts. I'm okay with it- same thing on my Motorolas, by the way
Another thing is that it's pretty big/tall! This isn't going to be a discreet radio to keep in one's pocket, that's for sure:
Summary
If you have any current use or curiosity around DMR, I say get one. Even if it stays put away for a while, the bang for the buck is truly shocking. I don't do affiliate links, but you can find them on Amazon by searching up DM-32UV. I'd expect this amount of functionality for a radio around the $250 mark
Questions, comments, or critiques? Get in touch any time:
Mark Mutti
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