Sean Cooley

Update!

Radioddity has made several improvements following posting this review on Amazon. As a result, several of the things listed in this review have been either resolved or are currently being worked on. Anything marked with an asterisk * are things that have been resolved. Here’s a quick summary:

– New software update v2.06 fixes a lot of the issues with the programming.
– The have sent the radio to the CHIRP team to try to get it supported.
– They are heavily considering some of the other suggestions made in this review.

Huge thumbs up to Radioddity for listening to their consumers and trying to make changes to improve the GM-30

——————————————————————-

To summarize, this is a well-built radio and functions great. There are some growing pains, but Radioddity is working to fix several issues that it has at the time of writing this review. If it weren’t for a few major problems, I would be willing to say that this is the best GMRS radio for its price. However, if these few issues don’t affect you, then this is a GREAT radio for its price. Let’s get into everything!

Some disclaimers: This is a GMRS radio and requires an FCC GMRS license to operate. As such, I will ONLY compare this radio to other handheld GMRS radios. Radios like the UV-5R and similar models are amateur radios, not GMRS radios, and require different licensing. This makes a difference because the regulations for amateur radios are much more relaxed compared to GMRS radios, giving amateur radios the capability to have a lot more features.

——————————————————————-

Pros/Stand Out Features of the GM-30

Starting off with aesthetics, this radio looks and feels great. One thing that was particularly surprising were the quality of the buttons on the keypad. The keys are very solid and were a pleasant surprise when I started testing this radio as I was expecting them to a cheaper harder material for the price.

Before getting into the functionality of the radio, I just wanted to point out that the included manual is great. There are a few grammatical errors, but it is very detailed and has some awesome reference tables in the back. Definitely worth keeping around, and good job Radioddity!

Moving on to the functions of the radio, it has a lot of great features built into it. Compared to similarly prices radios, the stand-out feature in my opinion is the ability to monitor the VHF band. This allows you to listen to amateur radio stations and repeaters, and I have had no problems with hearing my local amateur radio repeater on this radio.

The other stand-out feature is its CTCSS and DCS tone scanner. To illustrate how this works, let’s say that you’re trying to get in touch with a friend and you know the channel, but you forgot the privacy tone. You can go into the scanner and it will begin scanning through the list of tones until it picks up a transmission. Note that this only works if the other radio/device is transmitting.

Moving on to the scanner. It’s not bad, but it’s definitely pretty slow if you’re trying to scan through a large range of frequencies. In a test, the radio scanned through 2 MHz (002.000) with the standard step size (2.5kHz, or 000.0025) in 2:55.97, which means that the radio is changing frequencies roughly every 220 ms. That’s not bad, but if you’re wanting to scan a ton you should consider a dedicated scanner instead.

The next thing is compatibility. This radio, from my limited amount of testing, works with all of my Baofeng-compatible PTT’s and speakers. This is really nice because there are tons of options on the market. The antenna is also removable via a hex/allen key (thank you for this) and has a female SMA port on the radio. More on the antenna later.

This radio sounds incredible. The speaker is nice and loud, and the audio is super clear and really high quality, even when monitoring VHF transmissions. I can easily hear the NOAA station in Houston from College Station on this radio. Well done Radioddity!

Another interesting feature is the Hopping RX function of the GM-30. This does not actually hop frequencies, instead it secretly assigns a CTCSS/DCS tone but won’t display it in the settings. This is a neat idea, but I definitely can see several flaws with it. First, if the radio is just programmed to secretly use 88.5 as it’s CTCSS tone, then someone else simply needs another GM-30 and can perform a CTCSS scan to find out what the secret PL tone is, breaking the “encryption”. A more intelligent way to approach it would be to have the radio emit sub-audible frequencies to tell the other radio what PL tone to use. However, this again is easily broken by another GM-30. It’s a unique idea and I’m glad that they are trying new things, but as far as practicality I’m not too sold (especially since anyone with the frequency can simply monitor the frequency and hear all chatter regardless of PL tones).

As a side note, it’s actually a good thing it doesn’t hop frequencies. Since GMRS radios have a very limited list of TX frequencies, you wouldn’t get too far, and it wouldn’t be that secure. Not to mention it would be generally poor radio etiquette since you would more than likely end up transmitting over other stations as you’re hopping around. So as far as creating the idea of it, it’s pretty neat. But to reiterate, I’m not too sure how practical it will be.

As a side note, Radioddity is adding the ability to change the text on the boot-up screen as well as allowing you to choose which mode (VFO / channel) that you want the radio to boot into. I’m not sure when it will be available but it is coming soon!

——————————————————————-

Works in Progress:

These are issues that currently exist that either Radioddity has said that they are working on or would be relatively easy to implement. There are some major issues, but it seems like Radioddity is working to address these as quickly as possible, and these issues don’t prevent the radio from functioning.

**They have confirmed they are working on this** First, this radio does not support CHIRP yet. This is really annoying, and it would be great if they would add this feature, but I am not sure that CHIRP can block users from setting the radio from transmitting on illegal frequencies. This may be a legal issue so it may not come to CHIRP, but I could also be speaking out of turn here.

** New version is v2.06** However, Radioddity has released their own programming software. There are some flaws with the program itself, but they are actively working on it. The most recent version, version 2.04, updates a lot of features and they are continuing to work on better customization as well as fixing the bugs that currently exist. The programming of this software can be a little confusing, but basically to upgrade the firmware of the radio you are going to turn on the radio while holding the PTT and the LED buttons. This differs from ordinary programming, where you simply need to connect the radio and turn it on.

** These issues have been resolved** There are a lot of issues with the program itself. First, you cannot access all of the radio channel’s settings from the cluttered main screen. However, if you enter the detailed view in the program almost all of the settings are locked. Another issue is that they have added DIY channels to try to allow us to program in repeaters. I like this concept because it does allow us to transmit on the newly programmed channels, but you cannot change the offsets rendering it useless for repeater operation. The other problem I see is that there are a limited number of these channels. Radioddity is aware of these issues and are actively working on them, so this probably won’t be an issue after the time of writing this review.

Small Issues:

These are more annoyances than actual problems and are small things that I dislike about the radio but are largely preferences. I’ll keep it short here as they are small things that don’t really affect my opinion on the radio that much.

– The cover over the microphone and headphone jacks feels flimsy and the direction it opens causes it to stick out in an odd direction when a connector is connected.
– The screen can’t be dimmed. It’s super bright, which is great, but options to dim the screen would be nice (the screen is almost as bright as the flashlight on top).
– The stock antenna is actually pretty bad for the radio’s transmission range. The SWR of my antenna ranges from 2.84-3.3 for its transmission range, which is honestly terrible. (for those who may not know about SWR, basically you want it as close to 1 as possible. This mostly affects transmission power; it won’t have a major impact on the reception). However, the antenna is removable so you can easily replace it with something better.
– The screw used to fix the antenna is screwed into the threads of the SMA port. No major damage, but it definitely has some burs on the threads. I’ve shared a picture below to show the damage that mine had.

– USB-C is only for charging and can’t be used to program. This won’t be easily fixed as the charging port is on the battery not the radio. Not a big deal at all, but it would have been a HUGE plus if you could program it with USB-C.
– Clip is nice quality, but the tolerances around the joint are really low. It feels weak and has a lot of play, but there are a lot of metal parts and I’m confident it won’t easily break.
– It doesn’t come with a charging cradle. I love cradles, and the battery pack has the connectors to be able to sit on a cradle, but it didn’t come with one.
– I think this pertains to just my radio, but when listening on UHF there is a faint flutter in the background similar to the fluttering heard when you’re listening to a mobile station. However, it’s super quiet and I suspect it is only an issue with the specific GM-30 I received.

Deal Breakers:

These are the things that drastically impact my opinion of the radio and will likely never be fixed or are unable to be fixed without significant modification. The good news is that I only have 2 major issues with the radio, and they don’t impact the functionality of the radio unless you fall into a specific subgroup.

The first major issue is that this radio is not waterproof. This is major, and I would have readily compared this to the BTech GMRS-V1 which costs almost twice as much if it weren’t for this issue. This eliminates this radio’s usage for anyone who is involved in watersports, communications for outdoor activities, and those in the prepping community. Even just adding water resistance would exponentially make this radio more valuable. If one of these is the primary reason for getting the GM-30, I can’t recommend it solely because of this until waterproofing to some degree is added.

The second major issue has to do with the clip and the battery. This pertains mostly to prepping or scenarios where you may be storing multiple batteries, but the clip is attached to the battery itself instead of the radio. This is not a major issue to most people, but the two solutions if we solely had the GM-30 and its equipment are to 1) unscrew the clip and put it onto the new battery every battery change or 2) have a clip on every single battery pack you own. To Radioddity, I really hope that when you release the replacement batteries for this radio that you will include a new clip with each battery, otherwise this will become very annoying very quickly. There is a potential work-around for this, which is to use a portable battery and charge it using the USB-C port. But this brings up long-term concerns for the prepping community, because if the battery pack itself goes bad then you just have a nice paperweight.

——————————————————————-

If you’ve read all the way to here, then good on you and I’m impressed you’ve made it this far! Here’s the bottom line with this radio: It’s actually really good. Yes, there are a lot of minor things that annoy me, but the important features have been done very well. This radio outcompetes the other radios around the $35-$40 mark, and its closest competitor is almost double the price at $70. This radio is an incredible radio for the money, just be weary of the few issues that I have labeled as major. As this radio currently stands, it lost a star on Amazon SOLELY because it lacks any kind of waterproofing. Were it to have waterproofing, I likely would have left it a 5-star review.

One last thing. I want to give my kudos to Radioddity. They have been very diligent with emailing me back about questions while I was writing this review and have been very helpful. Thanks so much to the Radioddity team!

Interested in purchasing a GM-30 for yourself? Use this link when purchasing to help support me and my blog!