Radioddity GA-510 10-Watt Dual Band Ham Radio

Update Aug 17, 2024: My second complaint is that the volume knob turns very easily. When I put the radio in my pocket the volume will get changed either all the way up or all the way down. I contacted Radioddity about this and they have no solution, or seemingly no concern other than to return the radio. I ended up with a fix where I put a small rubber O-ring around the volume knob at it's base. This gives added friction to turning the knob and by selecting just the right size O-ring it works pretty well...not too loose not to tight. So I'll keep the radio despite these two annoyances. Original review: I bought this radio to use as a cheap dual band ham, GMRS and to receive local fire traffic. The speaker is good, maybe not great but better than my older Yaesu 2m circa 2005. Using CHIRP to program is great and all radios should be compatible with CHIRP. It has only 128 memories which is small by today's standards but I've only used half of them and have filled in everything that I can think of for now. Getting a spare battery is a plus. The charger: well, it's a classic desk charger (with a light that is tooo bright, I put a piece of tape on it's bright center, now it's fine). No USB charging as this radio seems to have been designed in 2019 based on the FCC filings. I was concerned that it uses a now obsolete chip and maybe it does, but it's RX sensitivity is just as good, no better, than my older Yaesu dedicated 2m talkie. So this is fine for me. Are there more sensitive radios out there, maybe, but for some $40 this is a no brainer radio. My only complaint so far is that the little tab things on the bottom that allow the radio to stand on a desk are too close to each other. yes it does stand upright, but wobbles a little when I set it down until it stabilizes. But it's rather thin (1/2 that of above mentioned talkie) and very light with good speaker and decent display. What else does one need in this price range. Oh, I did find that the antenna is rather stiff which I don't like in a talkie as that means a lot of stress on the SMA connector when the antenna is stressed. I ordered a brandX dual band antenna that is more flexible and will do side by side comparison on performance. In the end this is a rather older design clearly, but has modern software, a good speaker and is mechanically better designed than many others I've seen out there. Update after 6 months: the generic dual band more flexible antenna I bought turns out to be terrible at 2m band. So I've gone back to the Radioddity OEM antenna despite it being rather stiff. I've found that dual band talkie antennas fall into two types: 1- fairly well designed with an internal structure that requires them to be stiff; 2- a bottom end fed flexible whip that has tuning at the bottom for both bands. The later type is terrible inefficient as the radiating whip is just toooo short for 2m. The former works better, if you don't break it or the radio's connector from stress on the antenna. I transport the radio with the antenna off and put it on to use it and the treat it carefully. Not that I think the radio or antenna are fragile mind you, it's just that should the radio's connector get damaged it's lights-out for the whole radio. As for the radio after 6 months ownership: it's fine, not great, not bad, but definitely light and with long battery life. I still recommend this radio.