Awesome GMRS Mobile Radio. Very Easy To Program Through The Front Panel Or Mic. If You Have An Average Understanding Of Radio Terminology, & Read The Manual - You're Home Free.
No Need For A PC Or Programing Cable, (you can use if preferred,) but not necessary.
Completed All My GMRS Simplex PL / DPL Codes & Repeater PL/DPL Access Codes In Under 45 Minutes.
Receiver Sensitivity / Selectivity, Output Wattage & Audio Are 10-4 Top Notch.
Just Ordered A 2nd For Use As A Base With An Additional Power Supply - Good Stuff.....

Kool radio and functions well. Does 20 watts as advertised. But, the radio gets hot as a firecracker when talking alot. Heat sink is just to small. Get a small fan to keep it cool.

I have ben into radios & Eletronics all my life prety much 40ish + Years an I got my GMRS Lisence and wanted a decent little Radio with out breaking the bank and in doing me research i found this and i have a Very high end Coax & antenna Comet X9 ant and M&P Coax (Probably The Best Money can Buy) and i have my ant about 25-30ft an i hear and talk probably 50+ Miles in about any Direction a 3 watt handheld more than 10 miles and i can hear some ham repeaters that are much farther over 100 miles But That is Ground waves rolling at night ! this little radio Retivis RA-25 is pretty good for the money If you know how to get a Good ant & Coax and Forget about all the Cheep Junk on amazon an ebay 95% of All coax sold on here is Fake No Good Coax Will Almost Never Have an Aluminum Center and or sheild It Must be Copper Point blank an any one that says Different don't know what they are talking about..Except in a Fuw rare cases when Copper is just to Costly..if you want to Receive any thing more than 5-8 miles You must Get good coax ! But that's not exactly Cheep ! If you want to know where to look just ask i can point you n the right direction ABI Industry and MPD Digital are a good place to start I would say Start at the very least with RG213U Or Better ! But The Bet Coax is Probably M&P (Italian made) i cant stress how important Good Coax is & How Hard it is to Get Now Days i got burned 3-4 Times n a Row an i knew what to look for !

The construction of the radio is SOLID. I'm honestly very impressed for the price. The included accessories (Mic, bracket, mic holder) were also pretty good. The display is bright, vivid, and gives lots of information.
Out of the box however, this radio is nearly useless unless it's being used with the small number of other compatible Retivis GMRS Radios. This is in part due to the seemingly random frequency and tone plans pre-loaded on the radio. The programming software is also very wonky and as of the time I'm writing this review there is no support yet in CHIRP. Lastly the GMRS version essentially has 30 channels hard-coded into the radio and all you can really change are the TONES.
Now, all that being said, if you are a licensed GMRS operator you can easily boot this radio up in full North American UHF mode and take full advantage of the following features.
-Full use of all the GMRS channels and repeater channels.
-Tow Hundred memory slots.
-High speed scanning
-Simplex/Duplex channels (Works with Repeaters)
-custom programming
After I got the radio out of GMRS Mode I was able to add all my custom channels and tones to match my handhelds (Retevis Rt21) without issues.
I also added all the standard GMRS/FRS channels without tone so I could scan. This feature works very well when you actually want to listen to what's going on in the band.
After I got passed the software issues and got this radio out of what Retevis calls GMRS Mode, I must say I'm very happy with it.

I was impressed with the overall look and feel of this radio. The display is easy to read, and the controls well laid out. I needed a compact radio for the mounting location I have in my Nissan Titan. I used a flexible stalk that mounts to the passenger seat base, and this radio is perfect for that. I researched this unit a lot, and found something that was important to me that was missing on a lot of radios in this price point- a VOLUME control! When my wife is in the truck with me, it is very important that I can quickly adjust the volume so that it doesn't interfere with her hearing aids.
I highly recommend this radio. I will be building a personal repeater soon and using more Retevis radios for that as well.