Retevis RT3S Dual Band DMR GPS Amateur Ham Radio

This is my favorite HT when upgraded with OpenGD77 firmware - even if you don't use DRM function. The OpenGD77 firmware was written for hams by hams. It adds APRS FM transmit so I can play around with APRS and send beacons. It has a satellite prediction function to tell me when satellites will pass over my location. Everything you could ever want is configurable - you can for example download different "themes" to change the colors of all the UI elements. You can do things like configure the radio to start scanning as soon as its turned on. You can press a button while scanning to flag nuisance channels if you want to temporarily skip something. New firmware versions come out ever other week it seems adding new features!One issue I ran into is that newer versions of the radio seem to have FAR better GPS sensitivity according to various reports online. I bought a radio from Amazon with build date of July 2023 and the GPS sensitivity is poor (it eventually works outdoors) - but another unit I bought direct from the manufacturer with build date of October 2023 has MUCH better sensitivity, I can receive a dozen satellites INDOORS even. This is helpful for the satellite pass predictor tool and APRS. See Photo

I tried to read the manual but boy was it difficult to understand the English there! After 30 mins of fiddling, I went ahead and flashed this thing with OpenGD77 firmware and boy, this thing is now a ham radio! I was able to set the rig up to listen to a local DMR repeater by just using the keypad alone. No programming cable and computer! Talk about easy of use? LOL! The battery life sucks. There is no way this thing can do standby for as long as Retevis advertised. How about try getting past 2 days first? LOL! 2000mAH battery is too tiny. Keeping it in the charging stand will do charging and powering the rig at the same time. That's nice, but I don't seem to be able to find the charging stand from Amazon.Overall, the battery life deserve a 1 star deduction. In conclusion, the RT3S is a great value buy.The pros list: It's Dual band, fairly solidly build, low cost, analog + digital, and OpenGD77 compatible (more on this later).The cons list: battery life sucks, documentation sucks, user interface sucks, ease of use sucks (with stocked firmware).I don't use any of its stocked feature from the original firmware, but once it is running with OpenGD77, it's a beast! So to me, this is a BUY!I heard that the latest batch of this rig are not compatible with OpenGD77. Flashing the firmware is not for the faint of hearts so buyers beware! **I am getting a second RT3S even I didn't give it 5 stars!** Grab one now before the old batch is gone!

The RT3S is a quality handheld radio for a great price. Sturdy construction and nice to hold. It has excellent audio and I constantly get 5/9 audio reports.

Great product, service and communication!

As much as I wanted to give this radio good rating, I just can’t. The manufacturer does not even provide a Windows 11 driver for the programming cable rendering the radio good for only analog use. What a waste of money. Get your self a radio from another brand that provides driver to program the radio.

Nice hardware design. Feels good in the hand. It does run OpenGD77, but the DMR sound is clipped, and does not sound good when talking to my hotspot. Tried several different versions of OpenGD77 firmware, with the same sound problem. Returned it.PS: I purchased a TYT UV-390 pre-loaded with OpenGD77, and it had the same sound problem with my hotspot. But it sounds great with our local DMR repeater. I suspect that the RT3S would have also sounded good with our repeater. I’m suspecting that the frequency is just a tad off, which can be adjusted with OpenGD77

Great radio

Got it for openGD77, works perfect. The one I got was also the newer board revision with a decent GPS that will get a fast lock outside and at least get a lock inside, unlike the older hw revision.

Bought this as a DMR radio to experiment with, didn't use the stock firmware really, just enough to test it to make sure it works then immediately flashed it with OpenGD77, with the custom FW it works amazingly well as an Analog/DMR Radio, its got clear audio and has been extremely reliable, for the Price its a good unit especially someone looking for a new radio, I noticed with the Custom FW the batteries don't have the best longevity but should easily last you a day of moderate use but extra batteries are nice to have and reasonably priced, the stock antenna is actually really nice for a duck, after testing the stock antenna on a NanoVNA i found that on both VHF and UHF it was well below 1.5:1 SWR on band centers, something the stock antenna for my much pricier Icom handheld cant say.

Had some initial challenges with being able to program the radio. Windows 10 ended up being the source of the problem. The two USB programming cable drivers available on the Retevis website didnt work for me. I tried it on two different computers both with windows 10. I tried different USB ports. Since it was starting to look like I might have a bad cable, I ordered a 2nd cable as a part of the troubleshooting process. The problems continued.I found a driver specifically for windows 10 for the cable that came with the radio, things changed slightly. Windows 10 has a "feature" where if it thinks it has a better driver it will, without asking, change the driver. This ends up corrupting the driver and not allowing it to work.Here is how I fixed the problem -1. download the Retevis PCS to your windows 10 pc2. download the windows 10 drivers to your windows 10 pc3. disconnect the computer from the network4. install the windows 10 driver for the programming cable5. you should now get a screen where windows 10 complains about not reaching the internet6. continue7. install retevis cps software8. plugin programming cable to computer and retevis radio9. turn on radio10. You should now be able to read and program the radioNote:I DO NOT fault Retevis for the problem. Windows 10 with a overly agressively driver service was the cause of the problem. If you saw my initial review, ignore it, it took a while to get the root cause of the problem - which was not a Retevis issue.

My review boils down to these things:1. If you're looking for a good radio to run OpenGD77 on, you've found one.2. If you don't know or care what OpenGD77 is, skip this.This is a nice compact and well-built radio with decent transmit power and a relatively good stock antenna. I was really hoping it would be good out of the box, but unfortunately, it's just really not. So much is wrong with the stock firmware that I wanted to scream after only 5 minutes of using it. The menu layout is pointlessly labyrinthine, you can't jump to specific options quickly by entering numbers, and you can't use the wheel on top to navigate the menus like you can on an Ailunce - it only changes the channel, and if you touch it while deep in a menu, it will dump you all the way back to the main screen. Front panel programmability left a lot to be desired, and after fighting with it for only a short while, I decided it just wasn't worth wasting my time on when other radios with far better menu systems exist.I would have returned it had it not been for my friend who convinced me to try out OpenGD77, the open-source(ish) firmware available for several DMR radios including this one. The flashing process is kind of confusing and, much to my chagrin, requires using Windows, but once I got over that hurdle and got the radio flashed, it was smooth sailing. OpenGD77's menus are another learning curve over the other radios I'm used to (mostly Baofengs and the Ailunce HD2), but I got the hang of them fairly quickly, and it has a lot of cool features that no other radio I have has (like the cool histogram scanning function and real-time channel power meter across the top of the home screen). It's not particularly intuitive, but it's definitely way better than the nightmare the radio shipped with. Also, once it's running OpenGD77, the radio can be programmed just fine via QDMR on Linux, so you won't be stuck with Windows forever.If OpenGD77 didn't exist, this radio would get 2 stars at most from me. I don't know if it's fair to give it more just because an unaffiliated community project happens to support it, but I suppose I'm feeling generous.

I know how to program radios...I have programmed the Anytone 878, Ailunce HD1, Baofeng BF-F8HP, and the Baofeng 1801UV, all without issues...both DMR on the radios that are DMR capable, and Analog on all of them. They work fine. The programming software for the RT3S sucks...number 1, the drivers will not work on my new desktop Windows 11 computer..I had to get everything up and running on my Windows 10 laptop - this was a minor headache. I wrote a mirror code plug that matches all of the other radios and this radio refuses to talk or receive from any of them regardless if it's a simply analog frequency or a DMR frequency. There is zero logical reason this program shouldn't work. Nice radio but useless as a brick used as a pool float.

Solid, well made, good audio. I spent several hours trying to install the driver on my Windows 11 machine but no luck. BTW, I'm an experienced tech and amateur radio operator. Fortunately I still have a Windows 10 machine, and the driver installed correctly right away.For future reference when correctly installed (Windows 10), the driver shows up under "Universal Serial Bus Controllers" as "STM Device in DFU Mode". Details are STMicroelectronics 4-26-2018 3.0.6.1. My CPS is v02.24. Both the driver and CPS were downloaded directly from the Retevis website on 5-22.2024.Their driver download says for Windows 11, as well as Windows 10, 8, and 7. But I suspect certain configurations or versions of Windows 11 are not compatible with their driver.EDIT: after further troubleshooting, I discovered the reason the driver was not installing correctly was due to Windows 11 "core isolation" settings, which Microsoft turns ON by default for some very good reasons.In my case, I was not receiving any warning or message that my computer wasn't happy with the driver. It simply did not finish installing it.The proper solution for this issue is for Retevis and/or their driver supplier STMicroelectronics to update their driver to successfully pass Windows 11 device security settings.

Actually the first thing I did when I got this radio is to install OpenGD77 firmware on it. The RT3S with OpenGD77 gives you an amazing DMR experience for less than $100. Most DMR radios cost a lot more than that. With the 3rd party firmware you can store 1 million contacts with minimum characters selected. If you max out the display characters to 50 you can still store 340,000 DMR ID's.If you want the best DMR radio you can get on a budget this is the one.

It seems to be a good radio, seems easy to program IF you can program it. USB Driver is incompatible with the version of Win 11 I have. Had to install Win 10 virtually to get it to connect. Firmware upgrade turned the display Chinese. Unable to factory reset. Manual and English-facing website are useless. Might be a good product, but impossible to tell given lack of driver/firmware support. I am fairly new to DMR, so maybe it's just the way it is with inexpensive Chinese radios.

I created a gremlin in the programming software results that made the radio look right, but not transmit/receive. I used both the Retevis and RT Systems software. I emailed Retevis support, and plus/minus the time zones got an immediate, personable response. We had several productive exchanges with troubleshooting information. I went back to a full reset, reloaded the program I'd created and this time it worked. I got two followup emails to make sure the radio was performing. Can't ask for more! The radio is working very well making use of both digital and analog channels, with good audio reports and otherwise good operation. Very satisfied.

I noticed in the "What's in the box" listing for this radio, it did not list a usb programing cable. I reached out to the Retevis Direct representative, and they confirmed one will be provided in the box.I did not use the RT3S with the original manufacturer firmware. I always untended to install ham radio openGD77 firmware. I needed to reach out to the Retevis Direct representative again, because the Retevis website support links for this radio were missing / broken. They quickly provided information on how to get the CPS programing software and USB drivers needed. It took a couple of days to get the openGD77 configured, but the radio operates very well with many more features than the original firmware provides. Many install videos on youtube and at the project website openGD77.com

I've owned the Tytera/TYT version of this radio for several years and have made good use if it. I decided to upgrade to GPS via this offering from Retevis and got more than I expected, but when it comes to Retevis and their firmware have seen across other radio models, like audio recording, more channel capacity, etc.Fortunately, or unfortunately, the user interface is about exactly the same and could use refinement. If you're accustomed to this than it'll be an easy transition. If not, there's a bit of a learning curve to find some of the features, change settings and programming, etc.As an amateur operator, I've upgraded the firmware to the OpenGD77 format, and the interface with the GPS functionality of this radio has made it an unparalleled addition to my radio collection.The radio itself is of modest size and the transmitter output matches the spec well. I am looking forward to using this radio for many years. If the hardware is the same quality as the competing product I bought years ago, it will do just fine!

This is my first DMR radio and I love it. I have been a Ham for years and just now have found DMR. This HT has performed great. It is easy to program with the CPS and included programming cable once you get over the learning curve associated with DMR.I use it with both of my hotspots - simplex and duplex - as well as in analog mode with our local 2m and 70cm repeaters. This has become my everyday carry radio.The free-to-download CPS software makes organizing your contacts, zones, and memories easy. Exporting contacts and memories to CSV and using Excel or Google Sheets makes programming even less daunting.I would recommend this unit to anyone wanting to get in to DMR.

Took a gamble and bought one of these. It works well, but learning to program it is not for a novice. Once I had it figured out, I programmed a number of analog and digital repeaters into the radio and it worked well. It cover all of the ham bands within its operating range as well as commercial frequencies. The instructions should warn you that transmitting on the radIO IS ILLEGAL for unlicensed persons. I do not know if is FCC Type AccePted for commercial use. I doubt it. It might have a warning in the user manual but the type is too small to read. There are many confusing videos on YouTube on programming. I’m a retired Engineer so it was fun and frustrAting to learn how to use it

I was looking for an inexpensive DMR/Analog radio to use while hiking, and the RT3s definitely fills that need. Like all of these inexpensive radios, the CPS is clunky. Once you use it for awhile it flows OK, and I have not encountered any big glitches. The need to have Excel installed to import the Radio ID database is a pain, but same for some other brands as well. Radio is solidly made and has endured a good deal of abuse without complaint or issue. I find the audio is very good and the RF performance is at least as good as much more expensive radios. Overall it has more than met my expectations, and I find it easy to use. Especially after customizing the programmable buttons. Sure radios like the Anytone have more features, but if you want a solid basic radio that works well, the RT3S will do the job very well.

BLUF: Tried to use this DMR but returned it after 3 weeks.I tried for 3 weeks to setup and use this DMR radio. The Retevis tech support was responsive but was not helpful at all to resolve any of the technical issues I presented.The CPS for this radio was underwhelming to say the least. I really thought for the price and reviews that I would like this DMR radio.I really tried to like it but every time I resolve an issue myself, I was presented with another. I eventually was able to get this radio working with my pi-star hotspot and also connected to my local analog repeater for VHF comms. Then I wanted to use the 100,000 digital contacts by upgrading the firmware with the file Retevis identified to use. The firmware upgrade process was uneventful, but unfortunately, I still could not import any more than 10,000 that the radio was setup to have using the CPS. I tried to manually add the 10,001st contact manually but the radio reported the contact list was full. Also the CVS display showed corrupt digital contact info. Tech support asked me to send my codeplug but after 1 week of no replies, it was time to move on.After 3 weeks, it seemed like every time I touched this radio, I was left frustrated. I didn't want to spend any more effort with this radio. I have since switch to another popular DMR radio and it's been a pleasure to setup and operate. My new DMR radio is 3x as expensive as the RT3s but I don't feel frustrated.The RT3s hardware seems to be solid, but the firmware and CPS needs lots of improvements. While the price of the RT3s is affordable, it comes with lots of issues. Perhaps in hands of a person with the right technical skills and patience the RT3s can perform as it should. Good luck!