My Experience with the BTECH UV-PRO

I have been daily driving my BTech UV-PRO for at least a month or two now, and thought I would write on my experience and opinion on using it. Update, after several more months of use, I wanted to amend some thoughts and changes, in case any one is using this for their decision making.

Honestly, I’ve really liked the radio, with two primary gripes. First, the connector is a “non-standard” type, instead of the K1 or whatever its called that all accessories seem to use, so you need an adapter for any accessory use. Second, is how limited the label length is, by far the shortest of the radios I’ve used. But, given those are the only two notable complaints I have about the product, I think that is a positive remark in general. This does seem to be a problem with all radios. I don’t dismiss my gripe, but it seems a mess of dongles and adapters is unavoidable.

The battery life seems to be pretty decent, I sit most days listening to the local repeater without transmitting, with that, my battery has been lasting several two days on average, and with an easy USB-C charging port, popping it on a brick isn’t much of a difficulty either. It doesn’t seem to be fast charging, but it seems to charge fast enough – I personally hate needing a special charging cradle to interact with devices, I am terrible at keeping track of them, and eventually, I loose anything proprietary. The battery is also removable, so if you get yourself a spare pack, I don’t see any reason you wouldn’t be able to always have on charged.

I wasn’t all that concerned with the BlueTooth functionality when I purchased the radio, but when flying passenger I did find it useful to be able to listen in on the aviation-band AM, which this radio is capable of RX tuning to, along with NOAA alerts as well – though I do have minor grips with NOAA, it’s a bit annoying to get to, and the “ALERT” function makes your handheld screech like a banshee, genuinely more terrifying than the normal phone weather alerts, without any configurable settings to disable it. After another update, you can now specifically set a volume for the NOAA alert, making it much more tolerable to leave on! I always leave my radio on during storms, and it’s nice not having it scare the entire house.

The main feature I bought the radio for, was the integrated KISS TNC, which operates over the aforementioned BlueTooth link, which I’ve gotten working both on my iPhone, and on my Windows PC, appearing as a normal COM device. I haven’t yet had success connecting to a PacketRadio node yet, but that’s surely from being within a small city, indoors on the second story, inside a brick building, with 5W of transmission power. I have been able to use the TNC to connect it to the APRS.Fi application, however, and pick up on some APRS transmissions in the nearby area. I have managed to do some digital work with the HT, and can say, at least with mobile its one of the easiest options I’ve seen to do portable WinLink operations and such. Getting it to work with PC (especially since I’m on Linux) seems slightly more challenging, though HTCommander does seem to be an option to highly aid with this. Either way, I now see a included TNC as a mandatory requirement in radios, making even expensive radios seem cheap since they lack this.

A new gripe, while the radio has many banks, they’re split up into about 20 channels each. Honestly, I prefer the 100 channels and a single bank. Each bank becomes cluttered quite quickly, and switching between them is slow and annoying, and have to switch both channels. Honestly with how cheap memory is these days, I don’t see why modern radios have such limited channel count, the price can’t change that much adding something like 1k channels – that I would be okay being split into, idk, 100ch banks, but this is also a gripe I have growing up with modern electronics.

A new featured added, is the Satellite Mode on the radio. Downside, it mandates the use of the mobile application, which I have had some issues with being buggy, but after a couple re-installs, seems to fix itself. You find or create a satellite entry, provide it with the TLE tracking data if creating a new one, and program in the transponder frequencies (some satellites even have presets). Then once you enable tracking, the radio will automatically adjust for the Doppler Effect, and the app will show a map of where the satellite is overhead. Can provide a bit of a boost in pickup when trying to track satellites overhead. Something I didn’t initially notice, the radio, if the compass has been calibrated, can help guide you to pointing at the satellite. If you have a 3D printer and a YAGI, could make a little mount, and use your radio to help position your arm directly!

A issue I noticed during extended use, the radio seems particularly sensitive to specific interference. I can’t tell you what exactly, but there are several locations I physically cannot use this radio, the noise drowns everything out to needing a S8 squelch at least, whereas my other radios are perfectly fine. This could be a unit-specific issue, but BTech’s support line said it wasn’t the radio’s fault, so, I’m assuming it’s just got weak filtering or something.

A “feature” you aren’t supposed to use, but is still a bonus to me, is there is no soft-lock on GMRS frequencies. While I’d never use the wrong radio despite holding licenses for both and being within my power limits… having the capacity, at least during emergency situations, is always a benefit to me. I see HAM as a means of building a backup layer, so anything that is locked down or dependent on a company for permission, is diametrically opposed to the ideology of HAM radio, or at least my ideology on it. Thankfully this radio doesn’t seem to have any intentionally locked-down systems, as mentioned elsewhere, HTCommander is a Windows application that can control your HT just like the app, meaning even if BTech says “sorry we’re bored, goodbye”, you don’t risk loosing access to your radio. I think I’ve even gotten it working using Wine (running it on Linux).

Given this is really is my only real experience with “fancy” radios, I find it difficulty to recommend for or against the radio, but personally as a new HAM, I’ve enjoyed it, and for $165, I don’t think it was a purchase I regret. If you’d also like to pick up a BTech UV-Pro as well, you can use this link to Amazon (this link does not earn commissions) and get yourself one too.

Update, having had used this radio for quite a time now, along with my Yaesu FT-991A (I’m working on writing for that too), and my Explorer QRZ-1, and even just seeing other radios, I feel more and more confident in recommending this handheld to people. It’s more feature packed that many other radios I’ve touched, especially for its price point, gets occasional software updates still, and doesn’t require a dongle to use APRS.