I spent my morning playing with the three radios I’ve accumulated so far and none of them are perfect for my needs.

• TYT TH-UV88: Works the best but, but the UI is a pitched battle and the mic performance isn’t great-- I have to hold it like 2cm from my face and yell. So “best” here is a pretty low bar.
• TIDRadio H3, with Nicsure firmware: Love the idea of the firmware-- it has the best UI by far, since it can show things like both the RX and TX frequencies on one screen. But I can’t get useful performance out of the unit. RX is noisier, and TX seems incapable of lighting up the same local repeater as the TYT. The one last card I can try here is reverting this to stock firmware, but I suspect it might be a duff unit.
• Yaesu FT-11R (used purchase). The best build quality, but it has the small battery that the docs say limit it to 1.5W, which probably isn’t enough power to get across town, even assuming it’s in perfect health. Getting a new battery is like $50-60 for a 20-year-old device which encountered unknown abuse in its lifetime.

My kvetching about this attracted the attention of a family member who said “Christmas is coming up” so I figured I would research a suggestion.

What I’d like:

• Programmability out of the box-- either use a conventional USB data cable I have, or include whatever weird Frankencable you designed in the box. Chirp is preferred so I don’t have to dirty myself by rebooting back into Windows. Why do so many of the kits include a bunch of extra batteries, antennas, and clips, but not the damned programing cable?

• Good UI. Programmability may help on that part, if I’m not spending half my time having to try to re-adjust offsets and tones every time I change the channel. I’m sort of expecting the next generation of radios will be more like the KV4P project-- use the big friendly touchscreen you already have on you rather than try to cram everything into a 1.5" screen and a 12-button keypad-- but that’s not there yet (only 1W, only one band)

• No-disappointment performance. I’ve heard the big problem with Chinese radios tends to not be that they’re bad, it’s that they’re inconsistent. I’m still in the phase of the hobby where I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong or if the device is acting up, so I don’t want to be pounding my head against a wall.

• Takes some fairly common antenna mount. I’ve got a few mini-SMA male and female antennas now from the TYT and TIDRadio, but the Yaesu takes an BNC plug that looks like an old 10Base2 Ethernet connector!

• Something in the 5-watt performance class, at least as good reach as the TYT. I understand most HTs promising above 5W are lying or cherrypicking specs anyway.

• 100 USD or less. I looked through some reviews and saw “<= $100 when reviewed” only to see it closer to $200 today (Alinco DJ-MD5, or some of the low-end Chinese-made Yaesus) I don’t know how much of that is tariffs, how much is the current economic fracas, and how much is because the models I looked for were replaced and what’s left is old stock at a markup.

I have nothing against a stationary transceiver instead, but I don’t think there’s much in that category. Between the “$50 HT” and the “$750 boat anchor” categories, it seems like most of what’s out there is designed for mobile use (bare plugs expecting 13VDC input, no built in antenna so it’s two more line items to buy and match)

What’s out there on a reasonable budget? I suspect this might be a market where something used would offer good value, but I’d be worried about buying something subtly broken without an easy way to return it. Or should I just get a programming cable for the TYT and stuff it so full of presets that I don’t have to fight with the menus anymore? :)