Review: Motorola T5420 TalkAbout FRS radios

I first became aware of Family Radio Service radios on BRAG a couple of years ago, where some groups used them not only on the ride, but around camp so you could easily keep track of your group.

I finally bought a pair in February, with an eye toward using them on bike rides. They’re Motorola T5420s, about $50 for a pair, and they finally got a real workout on Sunday during a 50-mile ride that took a little more than 4 hours with breaks.

Motorola makes a variety of accessories for these, and I bought two voice-activated earpieces with boom microphones ($20 each), after trying and rejecting a more traditional headset model that interfered with my helmet straps. The earpiece model has a curved piece that fits behind your ear, with a spring-loaded section that holds it in place, and an adjustable speaker that sits right on your ear. A boom microphone on a flexible stalk runs out to the general vicinity of your mouth.

Once underway, the radios were nearly fire-and-forget, with the only difficulties coming from “Nextel Syndrome” where someone either starts speaking before the radio is ready, or tries to talk while another radio has the floor. The voice-activation exacerbates both problems, since it takes a second to realize you’re speaking and open the channel, and then another second to realize you’ve shut up and stop transmitting. A beep informs all radios when a transmission is complete.

The claimed two-mile range is an overstatement, at least where we were riding, which admittedly sometimes had rock walls on either side of the trail. We started getting garbled transmissions at around a half-mile.

The size was terrific. The units fit comfortably in a jersey pocket, and don’t weigh enough to bother you. Battery life was somewhat better than I’ve had a chance to test, and they’ll use either AA or Motorola’s rechargeable batteries. The radios were at two-thirds charge when we finished riding at 11:30, and at 5 p.m., they were still at two-thirds, with power on but no transmissions during the intervening 5.5 hours.