Walkie Talkie - 2 tin cans joined together with string would have been more use!!! (Motorola TLKR T7 Two Way Radio)

Member Name: dove3066

Product:	Motorola TLKR T7 Two Way Radio
Date:	07/03/09 (473 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: Didn't transmit anywhere near the range advertised

We purchased these walkie talkies from Argos at £88 for our recent skiing trip. We thought this would be a good alternative to mobile phones for communicating between lessons, so that we could all meet up much more easily.

We purchased this set even though they were a bit more expensive than others because of the well known name - we had had mobile phones by motorola which nad been very good - and because they had the longest range of any of the walkie talkies on the market. Having read a few pieces of information on the internet it seemed that it was best to get the longest range as the terrain could have a significant effect on the distance you can communicate over. The packaging on the box also suggested that they were designed especially for skiing - and in the Argos book they are recommended for Skiing, mountaineering, and cross-country.

When we go them home it was all very well packaged, and the batteries were fairly easy to fit. We put them on charge over night as outlined in the instructions ready to try then out the next day.

Size & functions
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They were fairly light even with the battery fitted. The aerial is quite bulky and was about a third of the length. We didn't try all the ring tones out the simple buzz that it was set with seemed fine and was loud enough. We did change the transmitting channel as we assumed that most people would leave it on the channel it was preset with and this would stop us picking up other peoples conversations.

Transmitting Distance: Urban
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We took them around the village to see how far we could get before they failed. This was where this product went downhill rapidly. The distance they transmitted over was only about half a mile - this was very disappointing. The instructions had recommended that ina built up area you could expect only 3km but at only about 0.5 km this seemed a little on the low side - as I said we do live in a village so there aren't any high rise flat or large office buildings to break the signal up.

This wasn't too much of an issue because we didn't really need them around the village we wanted to us them on the slopes!

Transmitting distance - In the mountains
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I'm afraid it didn't reallt get much better here either. We had high hopes to begin with as on initial use they managed almost a km up to one of the top runs. However (please excuse the pun) it was all downhill after that. We then tried them from one end of the main road to the other - this was just about audible but very crackly. However if we tried anything more further up the mountain it just didn't work. A couple of times we would get a ring but then nothing could be heard - just a bit of static hiss.

General Conclusion
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These walkie talkies were certainly no relacement for our mobile phones - infact we gave up half way through the holiday and then went back to using outr phones. The batteries lasted reasonably well, but as we didn't really use them very much I don't think we really tested them much.

Ok I thought 10km was probably a bit hopeful but even if they had achieved half of their potential I would have been happy. I would have expected better from Motorola. I was really disappointed with this product and they were a total waste of money. I wouldn't recommend anyone waste their money on these.

Summary: A complete waste of £88

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