IcomIC-M25 21 Handheld VHF Radio - Blue Trim

This radio is a great value. The feel is solid and of good quallity. It's easy to use, and of a good size to be easily held by a variety of hand sizes. I have been very impressed by the battery life. The adjustments like squelch are easily accomplished and work well. Highly recommended.

After buying standard Horizon junk, I bought this model from all the great reviews and I love it. Will work great at home for all the weather channels and on our big lake. This unit has excellent reception and power. Unless you're an professional, this unit should work great for you. Buy it.

Lo compre esto radio hace años en otro yate donde fui capitán y a un invitado seblo caigo al agua del maar a los tres dias lo en contro un pescador y nos devolvio el radio y funktiono todavia increible y sueña muy claro la comunicacion se suprime viento en el microfono

It's clunky and breaks easy. Day one on the job it dropped from 3 feet and broke and the antenna rubber piece just slides right off exposing the inner core. And the battery life isn't all that great either. I won't buy another icom radio. I should have bought the standard horizon vhf marine radio.

My application for this VHF radio was to have a handheld that I could take on my kayak and small sailboat. When you are doing multi-day trips on small boats, the last thing you want to carry is a charger that only can charge one thing. Typically, VHF radios come with "cradles" for charging, and they are bulky and need to be mounted somewhere. I already have USB chargers and cables for all my other devices, so these wires could do double-duty with a USB chargeable radio. In my research, iCOM is the ONLY provider of USB charging.. so this was the only viable option. I give them 5 stars for USB charging, and wish that other radios would have done the same.In terms of the radio itself, I got a chance to use it pretty early on. It worked, however I was only about 1.5 miles away from the station I was communicating with (with no obstructions)... and they had to drive up a hill to hear me. They did manage to come do the rescue, but it called into question the 6W power claims. It is possible that all VHF radios would have had the same performance... so I won't ding it on this one. I do worry if I had been further away, it might not have worked at all.Having owned other VHF radios, the ease-of-use is a little low. My other radios had volume and squelch dials up top. This meant it was easy to quickly adjust these important settings. This iCOM has buttons that you use to select the feature... and then you use the up-and-down arrows to adjust the feature that you have selected. While this might be intuitive for channel scanning, it is inconvenient for Volume and Squelch. Finally, some of the button operation is not totally intuitive. For example, when toggling between "hi" and "low," you do not get an indication if you are in "hi" setting (you do for low).The float and flash feature worked for me, and I really like how lightweight it is. Overall, I plan to keep the radio because it is the best option for kayaking or multi-day-trips on a small boat. If I had my dream radio, it would have dials for the volume and squelch, do away with the microphone port, USB charging, light weight (this has that), ability to transmit at 6W and 1W (this has that), ability to relay GPS coordinates.

It's always a great idea to have a spare portable VHF on your boat. I like to have one stashed in my ditch bag or clipped to my belt/vest when away from the boat. I've owned several iCOM radios and they've all been great. Compact, good battery life, waterproof enough to survive brief dunkings, and a good feature set. Handy addition to your boat!

Worked well, received clear signal. The design flaw was that the volume control is on or off, no middle ground & that's not what I needed.

Because i have a pontoon boat a traditional radio was impractical.Dealer recommended a hand held instead.Very convenient and just as powerful