I bought a set of these radios some time ago for abit of fun and so far they haven't let me down. At first I used this as my main form of communication for night time "escapades" during my first year at uni, often giving one to a friend and keeping the other for myself. This radio is great for this sort of purpose, it has a respectable range for this type of PMR radio, though I would suggest that up to 6km is a bit optimistic! Its also pretty rugged; mine have survived several drops that I know of, I think this is mostly down to the thick rubber ring round the outside of the radio and the generally sturdy build quality. Its also got a good selection 121 CTCSS/DCS privacy codes.

This radio also has a great scanner feature which is brilliant if you have friends who operate on different frequencies and want to listen out for anyone active on the airways. It also has a VoX function which I've used a number of times when on my bike, and seems to do the job relatively well.

Something I would have to say about this radio however is that heavy usage kills the batteries pretty fast! But I think thats fair to say for alot of radios in this class. Oh and it has this really annoying "ringer" button which gets very irritating.