no, it doesn't talk much more than most of the common chinese ht's.
However, it sells for under 50 bucks which gives you the radio, antenna, 
desktop charger with wallwart and an ear bud head set.
It has a full key pad and you can enter frequencies directly, as well as use 
the key pad to access menus and make menu setting changes.
It's a well made radio, has 4.5W output on VHF and UHF, and also has dual 
stand by so you can monitor two frequencies at once, though not listen to 
both simultaniously if you get my meaning.
Basically it flips between two frequencies, if you want, and stops on which 
ever one is busy.
It does verbalize quite allot, though not frequency yet.
What it doesn't verbalize is pretty basic and nothing that can't be easily 
confirmed or set via the keypad.
You can enter tones directly with the keypad as well making it easier to 
know what you have set.
It's similar to the wouxun uv d1p and d2p radios, but half the cost.
It's also smaller than the d1 or d2p wouxuns.
It's also compatible with kenwood and wouxun accessories like speaker mikes 
and programming cables.
I suspect it's the low cost that has made it quite a sensation around the 
world.
there are currently well over 2500 members on the uv5r yahoo group, and that 
is probably a fairly small representation of the number of people who 
actually own one.
On the technical side, the UV5R has probably the best receiver sensativity 
specs I've ever seen at 0.13UV on the VHF portion of the ham band, and 
0.14UV on UHF.
harmonics are pretty good, though it does exceed minus 40DBC on the third 
harmonic of VHF, which happens to be in the amateur UHF band anyway...the 
rest of the harmonics on both VHF and UHF are far below 40DBC.
The third harmonic on VHF is something like 37DBC, so 3 DB out of spec.
The buttons on the UV5R are easy to feel and are a bit bigger than say on 
the ic t90A or the th F6A.
You have reverse and power adjustment functionality with single buttons on 
the keypad, along with Scan.  It has full 16 button  DTMF capability on TX 
as well.
It even has ANI and PTT ID along with DTMST functionality for commercial 
applications.
you have full ctcss for rx and tx as well, and you can even set different 
tones for tx and rx if you want.

The rx audio is very clear and commercial grade loud if you want.

You also of course have full tx between 136-174 and 400-470 out of the box, 
and 136-180 and 400-512 with software modification.

Manual programming from the key pad to store memories and so on is very easy 
as well.  You don't NEED software to program this radio...none of the 
current software is accessible yet anyway.

hope that answers some of your questions?

73
Colin, V A6BKX
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Butch Bussen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2012 11:39 AM
Subject: Re: Baofeng UV-5R


> Does this radio talk more than the others?  I must have missed posts on
> this one.  Just curious what makes it better?
> 73
> Butch
> WA0VJR
> Node 3148
> Wallace, ks.
>
>
> On Wed, 29 Aug 2012, Bob
> Martin wrote:
>
>> Hi, Group:
>>
>> Last night, I spent a whole bunch of time learning about The  Baofeng =
>> UV-5R.  What an amazing package for the money.  Going to put the bug in =
>> Santa's ear and hope that radio gets here by Christmas or sooner.  Some =
>> of the material I reviewed on line came from members of this group and =
>> that fact assured me that I won't make a mistake getting one.  The only =
>> guilt trip is that I have 2 ADI HTs which work OK and which I can use =
>> with sighted assistance programming.  I paid twice the going price of =
>> The  Baofeng UV-5R for the 2 meter one and three times the price for the 
>> =
>> 440.
>>
>> 73:
>> Bob
>> KC3FI
>> EchoLink Node - 55127
>> Please visit http://www.wan-leatonks.net.
>>
>>