Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've owned my share of Talkabout radios over the years. These don't really innovate in any meaningful way, but they're compact, have great battery life and work fairly seamlessly. They're small and simple enough for my kids to use, and they have a lot of fun with it. The major difference between these radios and a more expensive set as far as I can tell is the absence of the "privacy codes" where each channel has some set of subchannels that are used to subdivide the channel for privacy purposes. I found in the past that those privacy subchannels didn't really work as well as I'd like so I think I actually prefer the simpler method that these radios use. The radios operate on up to 22 FRS and GMRS channels. The FRS channels 1-14 are the lower power channels that any citizen can use. The GMRS channels 15-22 are 50 watt channels that require a $90 license from the FCC to legally broadcast on. You can certainly listen on those higher channels though and I was able to hear truckers very clearly from a highway nearly 15 miles away from my house. The lower channels get about 1-5 miles of range as far as I can tell, but that's highly dependent on the landscape and buildings. Concrete, for example, tends to absorb radio waves really well so you'll have terrible range in a big city. The Talkabout radios have long included a tone when closing communication as a replacement for the "over" method. It's a great way to get the kids to understand when it's their turn to speak. There's also a ringtone you can send to locate a lost radio or alert the other person that you're about to say something. There's a scanner feature as well. Battery life has actually been pretty good. These take 3 AAA batteries. I use Eneloop batteries so I can recharge them, but there are no recharging features for this radio itself. I know older Talkabout models had a charging base, but they tended to kill the radio for some reason. So this method I think is an improvement. Overall these are great, simple radios that are worth the extra cash in my opinion over ultra cheap radios you might pick up at the toy store.