Motorola Talkabout MR350R – Two-way radio – FRS/GMRS – 22-channel (pack of 2 )
Motorola Talkabout MR350R – Two-way radio – FRS/GMRS – 22-channel (pack of 2 )
- Range (Optimum Conditions): up to approx. 35 miles
- Hands-Free Communication: iVOX without accessory
- Weather Channels: 11 channels (7 NOAA) with alert feature
- Channels: 22
- Push-to-talk (PTT) power boost
Motorola Talkabout MR350 is the ultimate Communication tool for the serious outdoor enthusiast. With a range of up to 35 miles and loaded with every possible radio feature, you know that with the MR350, you are ready for the extreme outdoors. Lightweight and rugged, with extra large buttons to help you operate even with gloves on, the MR350 is built to handle any challenge without weighing you down.
List Price: $ 62.10
Price: $ 54.50
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Excellent Product *BUT* Beware!,
I purchased 3 sets of these. They are the most powerful units I was able to find in the “for general public consumption” category. What I mean by that is these are not commercial or military grade units, and so their reception will not be quite as powerful as those, but as far as commercially available, relatively low-cost units go, these are probably the best out there.
The radios are excellent in just about every way. I’ve owned them now for over 9 months, and my children use them daily to keep in touch with us in the home. The children are 8 and 10 years old, and radios are our way of knowing where they are, and staying in touch with them as they play in the neighborhood. When we need them to come home we can call them home. If there is trouble, or a “stranger” nearby, my children can call home to tell us about it. In such a way, we keep tabs on our kids and we gain enormous peace of mind from knowing they can reach us with the push of a button.
We live in Central Florida (which is basically flat land) and we can get about 1 to 1.5 miles out of them in suburban areas. In one case, I was able to get a signal out to about 2 miles in a clear cut area. The key to remember is these radios are “line of sight”, which means if there are trees between you and the receiver, it degrades the signal strength substantially. My neighborhood has many trees, so the reception is limited to 1 to 1.5 miles. In open areas, you can get substantially longer range (for example in a desert area, or from a mountain top. Also, weather plays with the range. Heavy rain will degrade the reception.
My advice is don’t look at the published range on the box. I doubt 30 miles (or whatever) will ever be do-able, except on a perfectly clear, calm day on the Bonneville Salt Flats from an elevated platform. We thoroughly tested these radios under all kinds of circumstances. You get 2 miles out in a regular suburban middle class neighborhood, and you hear nothing. If your area is filled with hills, peaks and valleys, then this will also limit reception. When my kids dip down a small hill, and there are land formations between the reciever and the sender, the signal goes to zero. Around houses and trees on otherwise relatively flat terrain, the signal still reaches out to 1.5 miles. In one part of our neighborhood, there is a cul-de-sac that drops down 50 or 80 feet down (a lower part of the neighborhood) and the signal back there is zero. So just keep in mind this is LINE OF SIGHT. If you can draw a straight line between the sender and the reciever without any physical land mass or giant building obstructing your view, you can get several miles range out of it. If there are buildings and trees, the range is inside of 1 mile. Just trees, about 1.5 miles.
The other thing I love about these radios is the NOAA Weather Alert Service. At any time, if there is a weather alert in your area, the radio goes right to the NOAA radio station, and transmits the relevant data, no matter what you are doing, even if you are on a different station. As long as the radio has the power “on”, the weather will interrupt and announce the alert. Even while we are at home during our normal routines, on nights when we are expecting bad weather, we keep the radio turned on by our bed, and if a tornado or other alert is being issued, the radio comes to life and wakes us up. Living in Central Florida, we get tornadoes from time to time, and the radio has woken us up to get informed about the situation. We get up turn on the news, and find out where the tornadoes are to see if we need to prepare. This NOAA radio feature is fantastic.
I would have given the radio a “5″ star, but we lost a volume cap for one of our radios, and after a phone call to Motorola we discovered NO SPARE PARTS are being sold or shipped out to support these. The staff answering these calls were not professional, and poorly trained, generally disinterested, detached, and obviously bored with their careers as phone attendants/inbound customer service representatives. For such an otherwise respectable company, I was disappointed with the phone support on this product. The good thing is Motorola will replace the radio no questions asked through their warranty program. It is interesting to note the radio is made in China, and the poorly trained phone support people make a point to tell you about it repeatedly when they talk to you.
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|Motorola MR350R vs Midland GXT1050,
Motorola MR350R vs Midland GXT1050–both products received good reviews on Amazon and I had a hard time initially deciding which one to buy since I could not find detailed comparison between the two. So, I will try to be more comprehensive in comparison here hoping to help you make a decision suitable for your purpose.
I bought MR350R two months ago from Costco at $55 (tax included) to monitor my baby sleeping upstairs and to use during road trips. A month later I also bought Midland GXT1050 from Amazon upon good reviews and my dissatisfaction with some silly design issue associated with the MR350 VOX feature (which is critical for monitoring purpose).
Size and weight: MR350 is lighter (6.2oz vs 7.3oz for each handset including rechargeable battery pack and belt clips) and has a noticeably more agronomical grip, especially for kids or someone with smaller hands.
Setup and Change Settings: MR350 has more intuitive LCD display and signs/symbols whereas GXT1050 took me a couple of hours to set up and memorize what each symbol/letter means (It would be tremendously helpful if Midland can add a full list of all symbols/letters and their meanings in a simple table instead of diving this information into chunks and burying it into each individual function/feature section). I think a 10 year old can be taught to change settings on MR350 without a manual but that most likely won’t happen with GXT1050 (with or without the manual).
Features: These two share many useful key features like Weather Scan and Alert. GXT1050 has more channels (50 vs 22 for MR350R) which may be useful for using in populated areas although I never run into issues with MR350 on this one. MR350 has a built-in LED light for emergency use, which is nice. GXT1050 can produce a loud SOS siren which maybe useful in certain situations (although I never used it for any real purposes). Overall GXT1050 seems a bit more versatile with features such as direct call.
Range: GXT claimed 36 miles range and MR350 claimed 35 miles–both claims are meaningless since nobody would ever achieve the advertised range unless standing on two mountain peaks with perfect conditions. In actual use, the effective range is more like 1-2 miles in a flat suburban environment and a bit more in open field. Some reviewers here found a slightly better range with GXT1050 although my test twice showed MR350R lasted a slightly longer range while me driving away from home with each model broadcasting from my living room.
PPT Button is the one needing to be pressed down when transmitting. MR350R has the button designed in such way you can press the upper part for high power and lower part for low power–made switch power a much easier task. Using GXT1050′s mechanism you will have to pre-configure power level in the settings and is not very easy to change in a hurry. The shape of MR350 PPT button is made in such a way though, you would end up using the high power most of the time since the upper part of the button protrudes further out. Nonetheless, I like the MR350R design on this one.
VOX: This is one of the most critical features if you want to monitor baby sleeping in a different room or just want to talk hand-free. I agree with C. Hayes’ review here that MR350R’s three sensitivity levels are not sensitive enough (Hayes’s wording made me smile, though a bit exaggerated.). GXT1050 has 9 level of sensitivities and the most sensitive setting (level 1) is indeed more sensitive than that of MR350R (level 3), however, the difference it is not day and night–both detected my baby crying after waking up when placed about 1-2 feet away and both failed to detect my normal talk volume from 1-2 feet away unless I yell loudly or put the radio within 2-3 inches to my mouth. When put in front of a PC speaker, I did notice that GXT1050 started getting into the transmitting mode a bit earlier than MR305R as I turned up the volume knob of my speaker. However, if you want to talk to you handset placed on your shoulder (like policeman does) with your normal voice volume without bending your head to get close to the ratio–good luck no matter which set you use. I really think both companies should increase the sensitive level here.
The biggest turn-off of MR350R is that its VOX feature would be automatically cancelled if you press PPT button, intentionally or accidentally, even if when all settings are “locked”–my baby likes to play with radio and sometime the VOX setting is accidentally cancelled because he squeezed the PPT button. I found this a ridiculous under-thinking (or over-thinking) by Motorola’s engineers–I understand the need to preserve power if pressing PPT means VOX may no longer be necessary, but auto-cancel even though settings are locked? Does the word “lock” mean anything? GXT has no problem on this one–kudos to their engineers. I would have returned MR350R…
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|Best that I have used…,
I am a member of BMW Roadster car club and we do a lot of convoy driving to different events and places as a club. We use these radio as an aid to keep together and advance notice of turns, stops and or road safety issues. I have been using this type of radio for almost 10 year now and these are the best I’ve ever had. You can count on 1 mile of range under almost any conditions and usually more like 2 miles.
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