Hytera DMR Radio Reviews

I have three Hytera DMR radios.  The MD782G Mobile, PD782G HT and the PD362 micro-HT.

 

MD782G

This is a nice mobile.  Unlike the XPR4550 is has a color LCD screen, affording you a little more information in an easier to read format.  Beyond that, the radio is very similar to the XPR4550 in form factor and feature set.  I plan to make this my primary mobile in my vehicle and put the XPR4550 with it’s separation kit in the XYL’s car.  There is also a remote separation kit for the MD782G, but it runs ~$300.  I’m not sure why it’s so expensive.  I plan to investigate at some point.

One slightly annoying think is that the Hytera’s all display an “End of Call” notification when the repeater closes squelch.  Even though you don’t hear the squelch close, it’s the best way that I can explain it.  On your traditional analog amateur repeater, we’re used to hearing the courtesy tone followed by a short squelch tail.  Imagine that at the end of the squelch tail the radio would display “End of Call.”  It also beeps when ending the call, but I was able to find a software setting to turn that tone off, which makes this notification significantly more tolerable.

The programming cable for this radio ran me ~$50, but I think I could have bought it for a little less, maybe $35ish.  YMMV.

 

PD782G

This is basically the portable version of the MD782G.  Very similar to program and very similar in feature set and operation.  Right now this is my primary DMR carry HT.

Like the MD782G, the programming cable for the PD782G ran me around $20.

 

PD362 – Currently For Sale! ($275 + FedEx shipping for radio, programming cable, CPS, charger and holster)

This is the micro-HT.  It is slightly bigger than your average cell phone.  Very nice little package.  However, smaller package in this case equals less features.  The shortcomings as I see them:

  • Only two RX Group Lists.  So even if you’re not scanning you’re pseudo scanning because the channel you’re on will receive any talkgroup that is in the RX Group List.  In the other radios, you’re allowed multiple RX Group Lists, allowing you to place each talkgroup in it’s own list and assign that to a given channel.  Thus if you’re not scanning and are sitting on that one talkgroup, you’re going to only receive that one talkgroup.  I don’t know if this is a hardware limitation or a firmware limit and if anything can be done about it.
  • The end of call tone cannot be turned off.  You can work around this by turning all tones off, but then you lose keypad, talk permit and all other tones.  I’ve done this in hopes that they will develop a firmware update to allow more selective control of the tones.
  • No nuisance delete option when scanning.
  • For some reason this radio used a special CPS as opposed to the MD782G and the PD782G which use the same CPS.  It is somewhat limited and does not allow the import of contacts like the previous two radios.

Those are my two biggest complaints with the radio.  Beyond that, I love the form factor.  The belt clip could be improved to have a spring loaded clip vs. a molded one.

The programming cable in included with the radio.  So once you locate the CPS, you’re ready to go.

 

Hytera CPS and Firmware are freely available from dealers as I understand it.  But you have to find a dealer willing to give it to you.  You cannot download it form their website without becoming a partner and the qualification for partner requires credit applications, minimum purchases, etc.  Not something the average Ham is going to mess with.  As with Motorola the CPS can be found in the wild as well as the Firmware upgrades, but it does take a bit of searching.

One cool feature is the ability to import a Excel contact list into the software.  There are some nuances to preparing the contact list, but once you do it, it does make it easy.  I have a spreadsheet used to prepare the contacts I pull from the N6DVA website.  One important note:  In you want to import 50 contacts, then your exported spreadsheet must also contain 50 contacts.  Otherwise it just won’t work.  And no error message is generated to tell you why.  I wrestled with this for a couple of days before getting it all figured out.

While the Hytera CPS does all some copy and paste operations, it’s not nearly as nice as the MotoTRBO software.