MD-380 DMR Radio

I bought a Tytera MD-380 DMR radio last week and so far I am very impressed with it.  It came with a programming cable and I found a copy of the programming software to download.  I must admit that it took me a while to get my head around DMR however I found a video on Youtube which went through programming the CS-700 and the software looked almost identical to what I was using.  Success, I figured out target groups and colour codes and got a couple of frequencies programmed in to it to listen to, my local Shopwatch and the parking wardens in Manchester.  I found SDR# and DSD plus on the PC to be invaluable in determining which information needed to be programmed in.

The range on digital appears to be very good, the transmissions from 20 miles away are crystal clear.  You can scan frequencies via a selected scan list which is perfect to monitor a number of services.  The radio is compact and the colour display is very clear.  It did come preprogrammed with all the HAM DMR-Marc frequencies but I've not received anything on any of these yet, not really sure how popular they are and whether I'm in range of the repeaters.  The next thing I'm interested in is DPMR, I'm wondering if I'll get greater range than the analogue PMR service.

I would certainly recommend one of these radios but would strongly suggest that you make sure you get the programming cable with it as although you can program the radio via the front screen I can't see any way of inputting groups and colour codes.