Hardware-side: it has that nice, solid, sturdy feel. Dual conversion makes it more immune to adjacent channel interference. Eye diagram at TX is very good. Sound quality is better than what you would get with a modified MD-380 (and the volume knob actually works- ha!). QSOs can be made in both DMO mode and over a repeater/reflector, also with other M17 gear, such as the Module17. The firmware is still lacking tho, as its an alpha (OpenRTX - still being developed). Some functionalities are missing. There's no settings persistence, no clock, voice prompts are quirky, the rotary knob's position is not resolved, the display is dim and there's a small frequency drift at the start of transmission. All of it can and will be fixed in software in the coming weeks.
Excellent Review on your part. So overall it sounds like a work in progress. I have the MD-380 and I agree with your outlook on the TYT. So the issue to me is with a "Work in Progress" or the transceiver is "experimental" the price may need to be adjusted in my opinion but the radio has promise. Thanks for your comments. 73 de WI2M
Settings persistence and dim backlight bugs have been fixed in the latest release. The price will go down as soon as some other manufacturer decides to join the party CS7000 receiving M17:
Just received mine a couple of days ago. CS7000-M17 PLUS. Squelch can be adjusted from the Macro Menu using the up/down arrows. In FM mode, I don't get analog FM. Sounds like some kind of digital. How do I use analog FM? 73, Jerry
