Rating: 
Summary: A lot of bang for the buck
Review: I got 3 of these Midland 75-515's for family bike trips, but I've found that they're useful for much more: trips to the mall, skiing, all kinds of situations. I had previously bought and returned some other FRS radios, because I found that they lacked some necessary features (like call tones). What I like about these particular radios is that they have a large number of subcodes (38 CTSS codes and ~83 digital squelch tones) that screen out other peoples obnoxious comments (go to an amusement park and you will NOT be able to use FRS radios unless you can screen out moronic profane comments). The channel lock feature is a must also. Despite all the features, it's pretty simple to use (my nine year old has no problems with it). They're also really small, which helps when you have to carry one on a bike all day. The range is somewhere over 1.5 miles outside on the road, with only trees blocking your way. From car to car, it's probably about 3/4 miles based on my limited tests. So, the obstructions in between senders affects the reception, but overall, I was pleased with the range and clarity of the sound. In my opinion, I got a lot of features for the money, and the radios are very useful
Rating:
Summary: A good buy.
Review: I have owned the Midland 75-515 FSR for about two months. I use them just about every day. The positives.... 1.-A fair price for what you get 2.-Works well within most conditions 3.-Easy to use 4.-Light and small. The negatives 1.-If you don't blow into the mike before you speak, the first few seconds of your message is cut off. 2.-You need powerful batteries to get the proper use. If you can live with the above negatives.. the positives will well out weight the negatives.... it's not perfect... but worth the money and does the job. You can pay a lot more and get a lighter, smaller and more colorful FSR but still functions the same. For the money, reliability and performance it's well worth getting.
Rating: 
Summary: Midland 75-515 FSR
Review: I have owned the Midland 75-515 FSR for about two months. I use them just about every day. The positives.... 1.-A fair price for what you get 2.-Works well within most conditions 3.-Easy to use 4.-Light and small. The negatives 1.-If you don't blow into the mike before you speak, the first few seconds of your message is cut off. 2.-You need powerful batteries to get the proper use. If you can live with the above negatives.. the positives will well out weight the negatives.... it's not perfect... but worth the money and does the job. You can pay a lot more and get a lighter, smaller and more colorful FSR but still functions the same. For the money, reliability and performance it's well worth getting.
Rating:
Summary: Hi-Tech Walkie-Talkie in a Compact Size
Review: In my opinion this unit offers high-tech FRC radio capability and it is available for a bargain price! Currently Amazon has the best internet price available for the product. I want to offer a few comments about this radio which might be of help to others like myself who knew nothing about the modern high-tech walkie-talkie. The Midland Consumer Radio Company ... has over 40 years experience in 2-way radio technology-mainly CB radios and more recently the FRC (Family Radio Service) UHF FM band radios. They build a variety of radio models with and without weather frequency capability. First, I got the inexpensive Midland combo set from Amazon (Midland 75509W) including batteries/charger. The radio worked amazingly well, but I really needed a more heavy duty case. I went to the Midland web site and read more about their various models. I realized that their 75515 model was a "top of the line" unit with many more features including backlit LCD display and the capability to select 14 channels plus the 83 DCS (Digital Coded Squelch) and 38 CTCSS (Continuous Tone Coded Squelch System). That gives a total of 1694 code/channel combos for privacy in busy user environments. These "security" settings prevent the user from hearing other radios that do not have the same code. The clear and concisely-written manual reminds people that these codes do not make your conversation private! The 75515 model has a nice heavy duty case including water resistant gaskets for "splash" protection. Initially, I could see why the editorial reviewer commented about the "tricky battery cover" until I discovered that if I slipped off the belt clip first, then I could lift the cover lid and easily load the batteries! By the way, current models of the 2-way Midland radios also come standard with VOX (Voice Activated Transmit) capability in up to 6 levels of sensitivity/delay functions. These small radios use 3 AA --either, alkaline (45 hrs of use) or rechargable Ni-Cad (15 hrs) or Ni-Mh (24 hrs) batteries. An optional batter charger (single or double unit) is available elsewhere on the Internet or from the company direct. If one is really serious about using VOX, Midland recommends using an optional microphone/headset unit. To summarize, the Midland radios are top notch radios built by an established radio manufacturer and packaged in a compact size. For the price, I found no other walkie-talkies currently on the market with as many functions, a high-quality antenna and programmable squelch controls. Amazon should consider offering the optional accessories like battery chargers, headsets & microphone for one-stop shopping. The standard Case Logic neoprene walkie-talkie case fits the Midland radio units.
Rating:
Summary: Good Radios - minor problems
Review: Just got a pair of these and they work just fine. My biggest beef with these is the rubber covers for the jacks are very hard to get back into place - but not hard to get out. It would be nice to be able to access the channels in memory a bit more easily as well, but for the price these things are just fine!
Rating:
Summary: Good Radios - minor problems
Review: Just got a pair of these and they work just fine. My biggest beef with these is the rubber covers for the jacks are very hard to get back into place - but not hard to get out. It would be nice to be able to access the channels in memory a bit more easily as well, but for the price these things are just fine!
Rating:
Summary: Review of the Midland 75-515 FRS Transceiver
Review: Review of the Midland 75-515 FRS TransceiverThis unit has a nice "Walkie Talkie" look to it. I have been disturbed by the unusual designs of many radios. I am glad Midland decided to keep with the more traditional look. Upon powering up the radio, it indicated its awakening with a prominent tone. The LCD display is large and easily viewed. The only trouble I had was viewing the upper part of the display, where the CTCSS and DCS mode indicators are. Other than that, the display is VERY well laid out and easy to read. Volume levels are pretty darn loud for such a small speaker. Receive audio qualiy is pretty good. It is easily understood. Range checks: This unit was detectable 1.5 miles away with my wife inside our house and myself in the car. Effective communications were possible with one mile distance between us. In a mobile environment, I consider this range to be VERY good for an FRS radio. Also, we were in communication with myself inside the grocery store about .25 miles from the house... Perfect communications was a result while shopping. These units can communicate well between buildings. Power output is 500 mW ERP, verified by FCC test data. This applies to use of fully charged alkaline batteries. We used the nicad rechargeables for our tests. The battery life as listed, is pretty good. I have yet to have had my rechargeable go dead, and I've used the radios a bit. although I do admit some charging time. Intermod and other interference: We experienced no intermod. In our area, though, this is not unusual. We are out of the range of many dirty pager transmitters and such. My computer did interfere with this radio to a small degree... again not surprising. Personal computers commonly interfere with UHF receivers. Features and evaluations of such: DCS: Digital Coded Squelch comes to FRS!! This system is the latest in selective squelch systems. It is reported to be more efficient than CTCSS. We used it in our tests and it performed perfectly, even at maximum range. CTCSS: In case you want to communicated with units without DCS, CTCSS is there for you to use. As expected, the CTCSS system worked perfectly. Our "home channel" had additional traffic when we were conducting our tests. Our communications was not interrupted by the other signal. SCAN: This radio can scan for active channels, and clear channels. I would have like to seen a way to lock out unneeded channels; but you can set a CTCSS tone, or DCS code, which will allow the scan function to skip over that channel, unless that code has traffic. With that in mind, the radio scans whatever characteristic you have programmed with that channel. This is useful if you want to scan your group's channels and thay have CTCSS or DCS set. BABY MONITOR FUNCTION: This function will sit and listen for any noise in its range, sound the call tone and transmit for a period of time, then go to receive mode, and back and forth. It does work as indicated, but we have no use for it (until we get a young 'un). However, it could be useful in many other ways, such as listening for the doorbell, or the microwave beep to go off. Use your imagination... END OF TRANSMISSION TONE: AKA Roger Beep. It is there, if you wish, and can be turned off if you do not wish. BATTERY SAVE FUNCTION: during recive, except for scanning, sort of puts the radio to sleep until it receives a signal. Good for unnecessary drain on batteries... Problem though... It takes about a half second or so for it to wake up, so it is likely you will miss the first word or so of your communications. The delay is a bit short for my tastes. Too bad you can't turn it off. 5 MEMORY CHANNELS: This allows you to set up a channel and keep its characteristics set. While this radio holds any Tones or Codes you may set for a channel permanently, the memory function allows you to store the same channel as a memory location. You could have channel 1 as your primary channel, with a differtnt DCS or CTCSS tone set. Too bad this radio doesn't allow memory channel scan. VOX: This unit allows voice activiation right out of the box. with or without a spaeker mike, you can talk hands free. Good to mount a radio on the sunvisor :) With a selectable sensitivity and selectable delay setting, the VOX on this unit is the best I have seen so far. If you use VOX, this radio can't be beat IMHO. BATTERY STRENGTH METER: This is a 4 segment LCD that will give you your battery charge state. TRANSMIT/RECEIVE INDICATOR: Will display the appropriate icon. It will indicate when a channel is receiving a signal, so you can see actibity on another CTCSS or DCS code. ACCESSORY JACKS: These units have TWO sets of jacks! You will be able to plug almost anything into this radio. CHARGING CONTACTS: The radio can be charged with a desk charger OR an AC adaptor type charger.... Versatile! FINAL COMMENTS: This radio is a clear Winner! It has a nice look and feel, good sound quality, and range. Plenty of good functions. I have in the past, heard of problems with this series, however, I have discovered NO flaws whatsoever in the operation of these units. The multiple accessory/charging jacks are unique to the industry and allow for greater flexibility. Kudos to Midland for a job well done.
Rating:
Summary: Review of the Midland 75-515 FRS Transceiver
Review: Review of the Midland 75-515 FRS Transceiver This unit has a nice "Walkie Talkie" look to it. I have been disturbed by the unusual designs of many radios. I am glad Midland decided to keep with the more traditional look. Upon powering up the radio, it indicated its awakening with a prominent tone. The LCD display is large and easily viewed. The only trouble I had was viewing the upper part of the display, where the CTCSS and DCS mode indicators are. Other than that, the display is VERY well laid out and easy to read. Volume levels are pretty darn loud for such a small speaker. Receive audio qualiy is pretty good. It is easily understood. Range checks: This unit was detectable 1.5 miles away with my wife inside our house and myself in the car. Effective communications were possible with one mile distance between us. In a mobile environment, I consider this range to be VERY good for an FRS radio. Also, we were in communication with myself inside the grocery store about .25 miles from the house... Perfect communications was a result while shopping. These units can communicate well between buildings. Power output is 500 mW ERP, verified by FCC test data. This applies to use of fully charged alkaline batteries. We used the nicad rechargeables for our tests. The battery life as listed, is pretty good. I have yet to have had my rechargeable go dead, and I've used the radios a bit. although I do admit some charging time. Intermod and other interference: We experienced no intermod. In our area, though, this is not unusual. We are out of the range of many dirty pager transmitters and such. My computer did interfere with this radio to a small degree... again not surprising. Personal computers commonly interfere with UHF receivers. Features and evaluations of such: DCS: Digital Coded Squelch comes to FRS!! This system is the latest in selective squelch systems. It is reported to be more efficient than CTCSS. We used it in our tests and it performed perfectly, even at maximum range. CTCSS: In case you want to communicated with units without DCS, CTCSS is there for you to use. As expected, the CTCSS system worked perfectly. Our "home channel" had additional traffic when we were conducting our tests. Our communications was not interrupted by the other signal. SCAN: This radio can scan for active channels, and clear channels. I would have like to seen a way to lock out unneeded channels; but you can set a CTCSS tone, or DCS code, which will allow the scan function to skip over that channel, unless that code has traffic. With that in mind, the radio scans whatever characteristic you have programmed with that channel. This is useful if you want to scan your group's channels and thay have CTCSS or DCS set. BABY MONITOR FUNCTION: This function will sit and listen for any noise in its range, sound the call tone and transmit for a period of time, then go to receive mode, and back and forth. It does work as indicated, but we have no use for it (until we get a young 'un). However, it could be useful in many other ways, such as listening for the doorbell, or the microwave beep to go off. Use your imagination... END OF TRANSMISSION TONE: AKA Roger Beep. It is there, if you wish, and can be turned off if you do not wish. BATTERY SAVE FUNCTION: during recive, except for scanning, sort of puts the radio to sleep until it receives a signal. Good for unnecessary drain on batteries... Problem though... It takes about a half second or so for it to wake up, so it is likely you will miss the first word or so of your communications. The delay is a bit short for my tastes. Too bad you can't turn it off. 5 MEMORY CHANNELS: This allows you to set up a channel and keep its characteristics set. While this radio holds any Tones or Codes you may set for a channel permanently, the memory function allows you to store the same channel as a memory location. You could have channel 1 as your primary channel, with a differtnt DCS or CTCSS tone set. Too bad this radio doesn't allow memory channel scan. VOX: This unit allows voice activiation right out of the box. with or without a spaeker mike, you can talk hands free. Good to mount a radio on the sunvisor :) With a selectable sensitivity and selectable delay setting, the VOX on this unit is the best I have seen so far. If you use VOX, this radio can't be beat IMHO. BATTERY STRENGTH METER: This is a 4 segment LCD that will give you your battery charge state. TRANSMIT/RECEIVE INDICATOR: Will display the appropriate icon. It will indicate when a channel is receiving a signal, so you can see actibity on another CTCSS or DCS code. ACCESSORY JACKS: These units have TWO sets of jacks! You will be able to plug almost anything into this radio. CHARGING CONTACTS: The radio can be charged with a desk charger OR an AC adaptor type charger.... Versatile! FINAL COMMENTS: This radio is a clear Winner! It has a nice look and feel, good sound quality, and range. Plenty of good functions. I have in the past, heard of problems with this series, however, I have discovered NO flaws whatsoever in the operation of these units. The multiple accessory/charging jacks are unique to the industry and allow for greater flexibility. Kudos to Midland for a job well done.
Rating:
Summary: Review of the Midland 75-515 FRS Transceiver
Review: Review of the Midland 75-515 FRS Transceiver This unit has a nice "Walkie Talkie" look to it. I have been disturbed by the unusual designs of many radios. I am glad Midland decided to keep with the more traditional look. Upon powering up the radio, it indicated its awakening with a prominent tone. The LCD display is large and easily viewed. The only trouble I had was viewing the upper part of the display, where the CTCSS and DCS mode indicators are. Other than that, the display is VERY well laid out and easy to read. Volume levels are pretty darn loud for such a small speaker. Receive audio qualiy is pretty good. It is easily understood. Range checks: This unit was detectable 1.5 miles away with my wife inside our house and myself in the car. Effective communications were possible with one mile distance between us. In a mobile environment, I consider this range to be VERY good for an FRS radio. Also, we were in communication with myself inside the grocery store about .25 miles from the house... Perfect communications was a result while shopping. These units can communicate well between buildings. Power output is 500 mW ERP, verified by FCC test data. This applies to use of fully charged alkaline batteries. We used the nicad rechargeables for our tests. The battery life as listed, is pretty good. I have yet to have had my rechargeable go dead, and I've used the radios a bit. although I do admit some charging time. Intermod and other interference: We experienced no intermod. In our area, though, this is not unusual. We are out of the range of many dirty pager transmitters and such. My computer did interfere with this radio to a small degree... again not surprising. Personal computers commonly interfere with UHF receivers. Features and evaluations of such: DCS: Digital Coded Squelch comes to FRS!! This system is the latest in selective squelch systems. It is reported to be more efficient than CTCSS. We used it in our tests and it performed perfectly, even at maximum range. CTCSS: In case you want to communicated with units without DCS, CTCSS is there for you to use. As expected, the CTCSS system worked perfectly. Our "home channel" had additional traffic when we were conducting our tests. Our communications was not interrupted by the other signal. SCAN: This radio can scan for active channels, and clear channels. I would have like to seen a way to lock out unneeded channels; but you can set a CTCSS tone, or DCS code, which will allow the scan function to skip over that channel, unless that code has traffic. With that in mind, the radio scans whatever characteristic you have programmed with that channel. This is useful if you want to scan your group's channels and thay have CTCSS or DCS set. BABY MONITOR FUNCTION: This function will sit and listen for any noise in its range, sound the call tone and transmit for a period of time, then go to receive mode, and back and forth. It does work as indicated, but we have no use for it (until we get a young 'un). However, it could be useful in many other ways, such as listening for the doorbell, or the microwave beep to go off. Use your imagination... END OF TRANSMISSION TONE: AKA Roger Beep. It is there, if you wish, and can be turned off if you do not wish. BATTERY SAVE FUNCTION: during recive, except for scanning, sort of puts the radio to sleep until it receives a signal. Good for unnecessary drain on batteries... Problem though... It takes about a half second or so for it to wake up, so it is likely you will miss the first word or so of your communications. The delay is a bit short for my tastes. Too bad you can't turn it off. 5 MEMORY CHANNELS: This allows you to set up a channel and keep its characteristics set. While this radio holds any Tones or Codes you may set for a channel permanently, the memory function allows you to store the same channel as a memory location. You could have channel 1 as your primary channel, with a differtnt DCS or CTCSS tone set. Too bad this radio doesn't allow memory channel scan. VOX: This unit allows voice activiation right out of the box. with or without a spaeker mike, you can talk hands free. Good to mount a radio on the sunvisor :) With a selectable sensitivity and selectable delay setting, the VOX on this unit is the best I have seen so far. If you use VOX, this radio can't be beat IMHO. BATTERY STRENGTH METER: This is a 4 segment LCD that will give you your battery charge state. TRANSMIT/RECEIVE INDICATOR: Will display the appropriate icon. It will indicate when a channel is receiving a signal, so you can see actibity on another CTCSS or DCS code. ACCESSORY JACKS: These units have TWO sets of jacks! You will be able to plug almost anything into this radio. CHARGING CONTACTS: The radio can be charged with a desk charger OR an AC adaptor type charger.... Versatile! FINAL COMMENTS: This radio is a clear Winner! It has a nice look and feel, good sound quality, and range. Plenty of good functions. I have in the past, heard of problems with this series, however, I have discovered NO flaws whatsoever in the operation of these units. The multiple accessory/charging jacks are unique to the industry and allow for greater flexibility. Kudos to Midland for a job well done.
Rating:
Summary: Best for the money
Review: This is the best for the money. I successfully used these at Disney World. The DCS codes cut off the first word, so you have to "learn" to use it, but it did come in handy for crowded airwaves (no other radio's I know of have them). The CTCSS codes are a little better and are compatible with other FRS radio's. My daughter left one outside all night through a thunderstorm. It was soaked. After emptying the water, drying it out all night and replacing the batteries it worked just fine! (and she didn't have to spend her allowance on a new one). Makes me feel good about using them for skiing this winter. There is only one call tone and it's a little annoying. There is no vibrate alert. One set of batteries lasted the week at Disney. If your not using them everyday, I see no need for the charger. In all, great for the money.
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