20 Best Hands Free Walkie Talkie (2023 Updated)

I was expecting this item to arrive in the plastic packaging like you find hanging off the racks in the store. Instead the radios were simply laying in the bottom of the box along with the chargers and rechargeable batteries.

Just laying loose giving the impression they were not a new item. There were also no operating instructions in the package which has made it a challenge to figure what buttons do what to be able to set them up to our preferences.

I was very disappointed with this when I received the item.

Might be knit picking on this but there is no retail packaging, just a brown box – Was giving this to the kids for Easter and would have preferred a better way of presenting, other than that. these are AWESOME! Tested them across town to the park and worked like a charm – (mind you under 1 mile range so I was hoping there would be 0 issues) they also work well in our wooded campground seasonal site and gives freedom, peace and quiet (along with peace of mind) for us and the kids! It was also a better value than the 2 pack at only $10 more, it was a no brainer.

Do yourself the favor and get the licensing for GMRS to avoid problems.

Selected these after reading a lot of reviews. wanted a blend of quality at a fair price, that didn’t look like toys. We use them instead of an intercom system in a 2-story house. They work well, inside and out of the house, down the block to about 1-2 block distance (200 yards).

After that, start getting noise. tried it from the supermarket parking lot about 3 blocks away and it was just about useless. We don’t plan on using outside of the immediate house grounds anyway, so that said, it makes life easier instead of yelling in the house.

About what I expected, you need more power for longer distances and that costs a lot more. Battery life is short, leaving it on all day with sporadic use pretty much makes you recharge it for the next day or it will be very low.

No big deal in our case. Got 3 units for about $65 or so by price matching Amazon.

Not too bad. Definitely not a 20 mile range. However, I was able to speak chat a few miles out in an area full of hills and trees. I’m actually pretty impressed by that. For the cost, it’s a good deal.

The battery life seems pretty good so far. Range is reasonable. I like that they have the NOAA setting on them. The seem pretty durable as well. Overall, a good purchase. Very lightweight for a bug out bag or just to carry.

Signal remains very clear until out of range. No choppiness like some other brands. Recommended. I actually bought 4 just in case. These may come il be pretty useful down the road for anyone. Shipping was pretty quick and easy.

Advertised to have a 35 mile range, you must understand that this is quite optimistic. It might be true from the top of a mountain to the flatlands, but any intervening structure will seriously degrade the useful range.

Across suburban terrain which is quite flat but heavily forested and clustered with homes and electrical lines, we find the effective range to be about a mile. Nice units for use in closer quarters, but not 35 miles.

Well made and have a quality feel. If you are over 60, get a magnifying glass to read the instructions!.

These radios are perfect. We live in a rural area where the local electric co-op is not very reliable. Wind, rain or snow, we always seem to have a power outage of some type. The radios have a AM/FM radio so you don’t have to sit in silence, a NOAA weather rasdio to check on the outside storm and of course, the 2 way radio in case I go outside and can talk to ther hopuse.

My wife is disabled and I take the radios out when I mow my 10 acres so she can contact me if anything is going on inside. Could be a lifesaver. I recommend these radios to anyone.

Overall, product works, is intuitive, clear sound, and effective. I bought it before going on a camping trip and it saw a lot of use out in the mountains with no cell signal. The kids used it a lot to satisfy their imaginations, dropped it into just about every substrate, and the radios just keep trucking along.

My group was never too far from each other, so range never became a problem. I had 1/4 mile range before blackout in a suburban environment during a SoCal summer morning. I did not expect it to be so short ranged as i was hoping to get at least 1 mile, but it’s what it is.

Planes fly at 40,000 ft, which is 7. 5 miles and already higher than mt everest, so advertising 16 mile max vertical distance is unrealistic and likely unattainable.

I got these as a replacement for my trusty Motorola Talkabout FV500s (sadly lost one in a hay field. Those were great radios, but of course are no longer made. ). The Talkabout T265 has been a great replacement and has some extra features.

I have used the T265 for boat-to-shore communication when sailing on a large lake (The lake was about a mile across and I had no trouble with range) as well as for team spotting at model aircraft competitions (The hilly field is about 1/4 mile across and the signal was clear).

The headphone/mic jack is a nice feature that has worked for me so far, and the included case is really nice and sturdy. My old FV500s had a knob for volume control instead of the buttons on the T265, but the buttons were not hard to get used to.

All-round, these are a great set of walkie-talkies.

Motorola T265 Rechargeable Emergency Preparedness 2-Way Radio – Orange First of all I would like to say I love the look of these. They are orange and come with a camouflage carrying case. These are perfect for hunters! We are not hunters though but I still like them.

I love the fact that they are rechargeable, rather than eat thru a ton of batteries. So far we have only tested them at home and around the neighborhood and every time they picked up fine. There is suppose to be able to pick up each other at a distance of 25 miles.

Havent been that far out yet to check but don’t think I would ever need to use them at that kind of distance. We are planning on using these on a upcoming cruise in October. Will be much easier to use and cheaper than using our cell phones to contact family members on the boat with us.

We use to live near the southeastern NC coast line. All of our family is there. With Hurricane Florence just coming thru that area I wish some of my family would have had these so they could have stayed in touch with each other when the power and cell phone towers were out for days.

These would have been perfect. I think I will be purchasing some of these to use as gifts for the upcoming Christmas holiday. With hurricanes coming thru that area every year or so the radios will be greatly appreciated!.

We needed new two way radios for work because the ones we were using finally gave up on us. These u really liked the design of plus them being red and black (which are my company colors) were an added bonus.

It comes with 3 total. Pairing is super easy. The ones I had before these were a pain to initially pair. I paired these with no issues thankfully. So even if you aren’t super tech savvy you will be fine.

They were very well made and don’t feel super cheap when holding. They have a 20 mile radius which is more than enough for us when using them. The sound comes through crisp and clear and doesn’t sound super muffled.

The battery life is good as well. We usually just charge them at the end of the day so we know they are ready to go the next day. Overall I am happy with them. They perform as they should, battery life is good, they have been reliable getting connected to the other 2, sound is always clear when coming through and they are well made.

Definitely recommend.

The Motorola Solutions T210TP are a three-pack black with red two-way radio. My 9-year-old daughter and her friends enjoyed using this two-way radio as an alternative to their iPhones. We recently went on a road/camping trip and the girls were amazed that they were able to communicate in this way.

As everyone knows you have to pay money to use cellular phones. You don’t have to pay money to use the Motorola Solutions T210TP two-way radios. The easy pairing button made setup a breeze. You can power up in a more convenient way with the USB charging.

The Motorola Solutions T210TP two-way radios are tough and stylish. The key features of the Motorola Solutions T210TP includes: LCD display, 22 channels, has up to 20 mile range, and have no call charges.

I use these while working and they’re great! There are still a lot of features I’m trying to learn. Some of the directions in the instructional booklet are hard to understand without having to look back at the diagrams.

I haven’t tried them over long distances or uneven land (hills, mountains) yet, but they work well over flat land. I’m still trying to learn all the different functions, but so far I’m very happy with this purchase.

The radio is an excellent feature, especially for weather warnings and such.

3 hour roadtrip and one hour into the trip both headsets are chirping low battery. This is the first use. Both headsets charged for 14 hours prior to first use. That first hour wasn’t even constant chat and we used low output because the cars we following each other.

2nd use: same thing happened. Headsets charged for 12 hours prior to use. After an hour we used in car chargers to attempt to charge them while driving but failed. Also, while charging you can only listen, you need to unplug to respond.

Extremely annoying. Past the 30 return so I guess it’s a warranty claim now. I Do NOT recommend.

Great value with this option. I have not had a chance to test the full range but works great for around the house. Battery life can be short when you have Bluetooth and things turned on but it’s great that you can plug in to recharge.

Lots of user settings, vibrate only, pair to phone via Bluetooth, weather alerts, several alert tones to choose from. The belt clip is a little flimsy, I would rely on it if hiking or hunting. Good looking product design.

The neighborhood range is <0. 5 miles in my neighborhood. If you are driving in seperate cars, this range basically means you cannot communicate with the other car just a few blocks away. But my main use case for this was for communication with my belayer during rock climbing.

This works perfectly for that.

I really like how small these guys are and the fact that you can use regular rechargeable batteries in them. We did have one battery pack that wouldn’t hold a charge right out of the box, which was unfortunate.

Charged it several times after it died but it wouldn’t last more than a few brief conversations (less than two minutes of actual talk time) before it died again, and that was right after it was taken off the charger.

The display showed that it was fully charged before we took it off the charger and used it. Got about a mile’s range inside city limits surrounded by buildings, which isn’t bad. Haven’t tried them out in the woods yet.

I’ve never been much of a walkie talkie person, but recently while camping in an area with no service what so ever, we encountered some dangerous weather (a tornado) that went through near our campground.

With no way to get reliable updates and no way to contact each other, walkie talkies seemed like a good idea. I chose these because of the weather alert and weather scan technology. Although we luckily did not get the chance to use the weather alert function, it is comforting to have this option if we were ever to go through bad weather again while camping.

The product itself is really nice! I like that it came with the batteries for operation. The stand for charging is small and convenient to place anywhere while they’re charging! If you don’t have the space to use the charger, there is a USB cord that can be used to charge them as well which is convenient for charging t in the car in between hikes.

As for using them, I enjoyed the clear quality of the audio. We used them on a hike in which we hiked opposite ways (about 5 miles each, so a total of 10 miles apart) and the reception was still clear, although it was spotty depending on what the area was like.

For example, if very wooded the reception was a little spotty. They are very user friendly, as I have never used one before but it came naturally to me. The user manual is available on Midland’s product page, which was very helpful since this is all new to me.

The battery life lasts an entire hike for us, which is what we wanted, and this would be about 4 hours on average. We have not tried to use them longer than this. Overall, I really enjoyed using this and found them to be of great quality.

We will continue to use these on our hikes and other outdoor adventures!.

This set of radios were ready to use straight out of the package. The desktop charger is compact so it does not take up a ton of room. It plugs in easily and 2 radios just set in very easily. The 3rd radio can be plugged in using the micro usb charging cord.

The radios also came with belt clips and rechargeable batteries. The belt clips have proven to be sturdy however, they are removable if you don’t need it. My son and I use these radios to communicate on our 6 acre property.

We can always here each other and don’t experience any interference. We cannot back up the claim that the radios have a 32 mile range however. I got in my car and drove away and got about 2 miles down the road and we lost radio contact all together.

Maybe there is something I am not doing to reach that range? Overall, I love these radios and have already recommended them to a friend who also has several acres of land. The battery life seems really good.

We left these off charger (not using) to see how long they would hold a charge and they lasted about 1 week. With continual use, it’s several hours. The rechargeable batteries can be removed and 3-aaa batteries can be used instead if 3 or more hours are needed for communication.

I have only received one weather alert as it’s been pretty mild (weather wise) since I bought these. It was somewhat spotty reception for the weather alert but overall could be very useful if I were out camping in an area without cell service (which happens a lot).

The quality of this radio seems to be really good. It feels very well put together and rugged. When considering purchasing a set of radios that work well, have good reception and range and are rugged enough to go camping with and for everyday use, I would purchase these again.

Having solid communication with my kids while on our property or in the woods is very important and cell phones just aren’t reliable like a good set of 2-way radios. The push to talk feature is easy to use and the rubber coating feels thick and durable.

I bought these radios for work on our ranch. We move livestock, need to coordinate movement from vehicles and check in from work site to home periodically. We live about a mile from the main ranch house which is tucked away in a canyon and the quality of sound is great.

I’ve picked up transmissions from a neighbor down the river two miles away with little loss. I’m very satisfied with the quality of the radios. The led flashlight is ok, not super bright but enough to put the animals away at night.

Range if about 10ft max, my gripe about the light is that the power button for the light is right next to the transmit button and if you’re not paying attention you’ll turn on the light instead of talking.

The other gripe is the clip. Very bad compared to Midland. Hard to use and limited opening only allow you to clip it to thin materials and not easily. I make a necklace with 550 cord and wear it around my neck when I’m actively working with my hands or riding horses/atv.

Easier to get to it and I don’t have to spend time getting it on and off or out of a pocket. It’s been in a heavy rain with no problems, and the rechargable batteries and dock work really well. I can easily get 12 hours out of a charge.

Uses rechargable AA’s, so no problem finding replacements if they go out. Overall pretty satisfied, just not a fan of the clip. Would recommend even with that fault.

When some old walkie talkies I have stopped working right, I went to the Columbia, Maryland Best Buy to get a new set. After chatting with one of their salespeople, I settled on these. The walkie talkies have some plusses.

The biggest in my opinion is that you can use regular AA batteries with them though they come with 2 sets of rechargeable AA batteries and a recharger that you can plug into a USB outlet with the cord that is included.

My old set used battery packs that were very expensive. Also, you can use a screw driver or coin to remove the back of the walkie talkies making it very easy to replace the batteries. Another nice feature is the weather channel where you can get the weather forecast for the area.

On their range, it depends on the lay of the land and what might obstruct the signal. From what I’ve seen so far, these should do what I need them to do i. e. enable me to keep in contact with my travel companion.

The walkie talkies do have an encryption feature which is nice but, you must sure both walkie talkies are on the same encrypted channel. Overall, after testing these a good bit, I think their very good walkie talkies.

I look forward to using them on my next cruise.

I got these to replace an old Motorola pair of walkie talkie. Usually Cobra is good brand when coming to electronics (in general) and these was no exception. Setting them up is very similar to other brands (easy and smooth) the devices are more tough and smaller package.

The range is not bad at all. Covering the same as Motorola but with less noises and dead spots. Battery seems to last longer and the voice is clearer. The antenna is slightly longer but that’s not a big deal.

I think this is the longest range before you get into the UHF/VHF radios where license might be required. I took my time before writing this review. I pushed the radios to the limit several time and overall I am happy with their performance.

Good quality radios as expected from Motorola (especially at the price point). I love how the rechargable battery and dual-USB charging cord is included. The radios features are great. A little hard to drive at first without the manual beside you, but once setup it’s pretty easy to work.

Would prefer if you could toggle bluetooth on at startup (have to turn it on each time the radio is powered on), but guessing this is a battery saving feature. App is easy to drive and great for keeping tabs on location and the messaging feature is convenient in locations without cell reception.

Bought these radios for backpacking. I was recently on a road trip and traveling with two vehicles. 3/4 of a mile while driving on I-5 was the furthest range I was able to effectively communicate with.

Anything beyond that, the transmission was broken and had lots of static. Battery life was less than 12 hours. Other than that, the radios did a fine job. If you’re going to purchase these radios, just know they only work if you are less than a mile apart on flat unobstructed ground.

WALMART – do your employees huff bath salts???? PLEASE FIX your DESCRIPTION of this ITEM. does it really weigh 0. 05 lbs ? NOOOOOO Assembled Product Weight 0. 05 lbs IS it really 0. 25 inches wide? no, long? no.

High, NO. —- FIX YOUR PAGE WITH CORRECT info. Assembled Product Dimensions (L x W x H) 2. 50 x 0. 25 x 1. 00 Inches ——————– WALMART gets ONE start. but the product may deserve 5. I won’t know until I make a purchasing decision based on FACTS, not their LSD delusions.

Highlight the shipping, which was super fast and perfectly protected. The product is very efficient. Sound quality, easy to operate, and many options. The screen is very beautiful. out of the ordinary.

They have a perfect color for hiking in the mountains, because if for some reason we drop it or forget it, it is easy to find. The maximum range remains to be tested. Thanks for everything.

Unfortunately, there is a battery that does not charge well. I put all four batteries to charge. Three of them charged in more or less 8 hours. Unfortunately, the fourth does not seem to charge. I put it back on charge this morning and it has been on the charger for 3 hours now, but the charge has not been completed.

Is it possible to fix this problem? Thank you for your collaboration. Colette Rodier.

Great product and great price. I decided to keep it at the end. Thank you!

These are fine for leisure like around a camp site but Bought these for work very easy to use and clear audio. Worked straight out the box so no setup needed. My only issue with these is the battery life isnt as good As I was hoping.

They lasted from first switch on 8am to about 230 pm so 6 12 powered up. With 3 AAA BATTERIES x 2 being used everyday thats a lot of money in batteries. Now looking for some rechargeable ones. Its the first set Ive bought and used so maybe I was expecting too much.

My wife said they would be good to use On a Cruise ship so looks like Im going on a cruise soon. Ffs.

Absolutely brilliant walkie talkies for the money. It just goes to show that you dont need expensive alternatives. I bought these for our two sons to play with during a recent camping trip and we kept the third one, which made it really easy to keep in contact with them as they played.

The hand sets are robust and well made with good sound quality. Theyre also very easy to pair. Absolutely recommended.

Grandkids 9 and 10 years have wanted Walkie Talkies for quite a while but I found the huge range of Toy Talkies with varied prices and reviews mind boggling. In the end I went for a good well known brand with a fair price tag, adding rechargable battries and a charger to my order.

I am amazed at how good these are, my grandkids ride their bikes with these on lanyards and using the clip provided attach to clothing to easily speak to parents while out in the local countryside. Fun and practical, well made seem quite rugged not waterproof, great quality sound, easy to set up, handy size for all the family set of 3 would highly reccomend for an active family.

Dont know the range of these but they have worked in Mountains, forest and built up areas with no problems and even between cars May treat myself to a single for when I go out with my daughter and family then it wont matter so much when I get left behind.

Great radios. Just took these to New Hampshire on a ski trip. We had a lot of fun in the slopes. They work great. We are grateful to have bought them, while driving through Bretton Woods and the white mountains we didn’t have phone signal.

These worked great car to car. Awesome purchase, thought it would be for the kids, but we (the grown ups) have a great time. THey work as expected.

My kids have been having a blast with these. Surprisingly, they have not fought over who gets what color, but maybe that will happen later. I have 4 kids so this pack was perfect and my wife and I can use the LXT500VP3 with them.

The radios are great for beginners like kids that don’t need any advanced features. When we received the radios, we added the AAA batteries needed and off they went. They have been pretty durable so far and I expect to get a lot of use out of them.

The range is pretty decent. I can send my kids to their friends house or the school and have clear communication no problem. We are avid campers that love to spend time at the lake. These allow us to send the kids to the lake to fish when they want while we cleanup or take a nap in the chair or hammock.

We can communicate with them very easily. The belt buckle makes it super convenient to have ready especially if they are fishing. The only downside is that I wish they had rechargeable batteries so I may need to get some just for these.

I wanted a pair of walkie talkies that I could use around the house and with the grand kids as well. I chose Midland because I was very satisfied with my HH54 weather radio, which I’ve had for about 6 years.

I found that like the weather radio, the walkie talkies work very well with the permanently attached smaller antennas. (Type accepted) Right out of the box I noticed how well the T71’s received other stations in the local area that I had previously heard on my Alinco handheld.

There was no “intermod” interference on any channels. I tried them with my wife and they went through the high rise & out over a mile or so, with audio that was loud & clear on low power channel 8. Note that on channels 8 – 14 there seems to be less interference from more powerful stations in the area due to the mandatory low power settings.

The 1 amp rechargeable batteries are a plus. If you need more power you’ve got 2 watts that you didn’t have under the old FRS rules. High power channels are 1-7 and 15-22 but you may be sharing with GMRS stations in your area.

In that case you can use the private codes that are available with this series. I did turn off the “roger beep” and BP key tones because they were annoying. The weather radio feature can come in handy to get the latest up to the moment info from NOAA weather.

The weather radio alerts & warnings are better than the emergency alerts you get on the cell phone, in my opinion. The radio does not however, support the use of S. A. M. E or County codes, so you will have to listen carefully to the information from NOAA to see if it actually applies to your local area or not because NOAA weather radio is a region wide broadcast.

One thing the instruction book didn’t cover or I didn’t notice were the extra channels, 23-36. These are just repeats from the original 22 with a simplification of the quiet codes. Also, these radios cannot access any repeaters that you will hear on some of the upper channels.

And now on to Customer Service. There was a battery issue. One of the packs would go dead prematurely so I contacted Midland and replacement batteries are on the way. All in all a good value for the money and no license is required: Also there is no “skip” interference on UHF like the kind you get on CB radio plus the FM modulation is clean and quiet.

I can honestly tell you that these radios will get a lot of use in our family. Dan.

Don’t buy these to use with a GMRS repeater. These are decent radios if you want just a quick fix for something at the house or on the farm but if you plan on going hiking with these anywhere near a GMRS repeater they will not work.

I was hoping that the additional channels were used for repeater offsets but I was wrong. They’re simply standard channels with privacy code offsets. Seeing how you can set privacy codes on every other channel it seems sort of pointless to do this unless you want to make it seem like there are actually more channels than what’s actually available.

FRS radios operate on 22 different, standard frequencies, GMRS operates on 8 additional frequencies for repeater purposes as well as allowing you to transmit at higher powers with the propper FCC license.

While the packaging and labeling say “GMRS” it is misleading because you’re only functioning on FRS. If you go out and buy a second set of GMRS radios that aren’t midland’s preset channels you’re going to have a bad time and these will only be able to communicate with them in simplex on the first 22 channels.

We bought these walkie talkies in 2021 and used them everyday on our farm until this winter 2022. My husband lost his walkie talkie somewhere on our property in the beginning of our winter as we had a huge snow storm.

We had been trying to find another one but didn’t have any luck as we are in Canada. Our snow has been melting these last 2 weeks and my husband found our missing walking talkie. I didn’t think it would be any good as it was out all winter long with temps in the -30’s C.

After we dried the walking talkie and charged it up. It still works great. We couldn’t believe it. What an awesome product. Thank you for making a great product that lasts.

Bought these radios for use during hurricanes. Thankfully never needed to use them for such an event. However, they have been sitting in my office waiting on standby just in case the need for them ever arrives.

After 5 years of sitting in the same place one unit has died. It’s not the battery pack that has failed as I have pulled the pack out of the failed unit and it powers up the other working one. Cheap enough that if you break gear often or need to use it in bad weather that it’s not a big deal if they die, but if you’re keeping them on standby for use in an emergency just know that they may randomly stop working for no apparent reason.

Checked them once a week to make sure they were topped up or turned on, today one failed my check. It’s now two years past the warranty date so just more eWaste to dispose of. Kinda defeats the purpose of having them for an emergency.

I will not be purchasing this radio again but I’ll probably try other Midland products.

I have a contentious relationship with writting reviews online. After all, everyone is on a different learning curve when it comes to figureing out how technology works. But my God this product is bad.

“Taliban bad. ” Thats how bad this product is. Charged it 2 days straight to use it on the road. Only for the battery to die on us soon as we got on the road. Reason why I purchased this product was to avoid using a cellphone while driving.

At least in my thought process, i speculated that i can hide this product while driving by just using the Push To Talk function. i ended up using my cellphone and a blue tooth device to communicate with my wife.

Which in the end, cost me nothing. Now i have a product I don’t need and a product I can’t return because i discarded the box which came with it and finding a receipt when you are moving from one state to another state, is beyond human abilities.

I will neither encouraged nor discouraged anyone who is interested in purchasing this product from going ahead and dispensing off with their hard earned money. Anyone reading this review is, “at least I hope” grown enough to make their own descions on whether they want to go ahead and purchase this item.

I bought these radios after getting separated from a companion in an area of shoddy mobile coverage. Since buying these, we’ve used them every day we go skiing. As others have said, they’re good for line-of-sight communication for the distance between the top and bottom of the mountain which corresponds to about a mile.

I’ve also found that they will still work if trees are obscuring the line of sight, however they won’t do any good if there’s a rise of land between you. This is pretty consistent across all FRS radios that I’ve used.

As far as these models, my favorite quality is probably their size: I can zip it into a breast pocket on my fleece with just a bit of antenna sticking out and kids can zip it into their pants pocket without any parts exposed.

My least favorite thing about these is that the battery level indicator is wildly innacurate: It might show 3 bars (full) of battery in the morning but an hour later you’ll be getting the low battery warning alert.

By comparison, I also use a Motorola T260 and a BCA BC Link radio. While my favorite is the BC Link, this one’s probably most reliable for all.

Simple to set up and programme. Nice modern design. 16 channels so can be used in busy areas no problem. Range will depend on the environment but easily achieved 4km in open countryside. At higher altitudes you could get double that.

Obviously the range is a lot less in towns but still okay. Works as expected.

Birthday present for 7 year old twins confined to flat in lockdown. Instant hit and inventing lots of new games. Looking forward to getting out and about with the walkie talkies. Easy to use for their age group but lots of potential to take them through the next few years too.

I use these radios on fishing trips and I can safely say they live up to Motorola’s reputation. Nice and solidly built, sound quality is great, and most importantly the battery lasts a good while so you’re not forever having it run out on you.

Would recommend.

Easy to set up, good features and they float! Not too sure about the claimed 10k range for normal use in what is a pretty rural setting where I live. However the range is good enough for my usage so happy overall.