Baofeng UV-5RM Plus, a better UV-5R, but by how much?

One of the most obvious upgrades on the Baofeng UV-5RM Plus is the new 1.77″ color screen, which is pretty bright cnd very clear. I am not a fan of these going completely black making it impossible to glance over and read your frequency, but that can be fixed easy enough in the menus, right? Not so fast. I could not find a menu option for the backlight or screen timer at all. Strange. We will come back to this later.

This larger screen allows the Baofeng UV-5RM Plus to display larger frequency numbers that make it easier to read from even a distance (assuming your screen is on). The layout of the screen seems like a reasonable copy of my Yaesu FT-3DR, just smaller and not as sharp.

While we are on the screen, the menu options are one place I am going to have to really call foul on this radio. For all the screen realestate and colors available, they tuck the menu under the first frequency line so it is using only half the screen. This, in and of itself, is not that bad, as the text is almost the size it would be on a UV-5R. The problem is that some genius decided to make it small, and dark red on black. Was the engineer trying to make it impossible to read?

And before you ask, no, you can not change the colors of anything on the Baofeng UV-5RM Plus like you can the backlight in the UV-5R. At least not that I can find.

In the hand, the Baofeng UV-5RM Plus feels like a UV-5R, but better. The slight extra width and thickness make it fit in my large hands better. I also like the larger and stronger clip, whose rounded edges seem to fit in my palm very well.

On a good note, the battery on the Baofeng UV-5RM Plus is not only a large 2500mAh battery, but it has a USB-C charging port in the back. While I really appreciate the USB-C charging, I really dislike the lack of a drop-in charger. No, it will not fit in a UV-5R charger either. Bummer.

Performance:

Now let’s take a look at the performance of the radio. This might really surprise you.

To start with, the Baofeng UV-5RM Plus has a cleaner, more stable transmit signal. When looking at the spectrum analysis of the old UV-5R, you can clearly see an initial burst followed by a fairly quick falloff of intensity and power. With this radio, the initial spread looks almost exactly like the spread 30 seconds later. No falloff at all.

The central part of the spectrum of the Baofeng UV-5RM Plus is not quite as concentrated as I would like to see, but it absolutely is a good signal and vast improvement over the previous model.

As far as the antenna that comes with the Baofeng UV-5RM Plus, while it certainly is no Diamond, it does an extremely good job for a factory included dual-band antenna. There are better, but there are a whole lot worse too, and the worse ones are far more common.

Power output is where the Baofeng UV-5RM Plus really shines. The vast majority of Baofeng type radios I test measure 3-5 watts output, including models like the BF-F8HP. Over five watts? Maybe three Baofengs in all these years, including this one. The Baofeng UV-5RM Plus actually puts out 7 watts to its antenna at 2m, and 5.5 watts on 70cm. That’s impressive. Read how I test radios, and you will see why that is such a rare occurrence.

Images:

Test Results:

Test Images:

• High-power output, claimed 10W
• Dual-band 2m/70cm plus 1.25m receive
• Large 2500mAh battery
• USB-C charging
• CHIRP compatible
• 1.77″ Color screen
• 999 Channels
• One-key wireless frequency copy
• NOAA weather channels

Earlier, I said we would come back to the fact that I could not find a place to change the backlight or screen time out, and here we are. I could not find it because it does not exist in the radio, it has to be changed in programming software.

OK, it’s nice that I can change it in software, but a royal pain for something so simple to be in software only. Particularly since this is the first radio I can remember that wasn’t a DMR radio that required programming software to change that function. Weird.

Anyway, the Baofeng UV-5RM Plus is fully compatible right out of the box with CHRIP, and requires no weird cables, just a standard Baofeng programming cable like the one used for the UV-5R. For some reason, it is listed under Baofeng as just “5RM” instead of UV-5R like the older one, but it does seem to work well.

Baofeng also has their own CPS (customer programming software) which I have linked to in the grid above. I wouldn’t use it, I would just download and use CHIRP.

Conclusions

The Baofeng UV-5RM Plus is a good successor to the venerable UV-5R. It is slightly more expensive (still under $30 at the time of writing) and it doesn’t come with a drop-in charger, which I really like having. I also really do not like having to use the programming software to change simple options, and that red menu in small font is almost a deal-breaker for me.

On the plus side, the Baofeng UF-5RM Plus is more comfortable in my hand, has a much easier to read screen when it is on, and puts out one of the most powerful and least messy signals of any radio even remotely in its class.

Do I recommend the radio? For the money, yes. I probably won’t trade in my UV-9R Plus on it, even though technically it is a “better” radio. But yes, it is an excellent value for the money.

Here are some reviews of the Baofeng UV-5RM Plus!