Considering a Baofeng GT3-TP Mark III - Opinions?

[Jeffhs]

While looking at the reviews of the Baofeng UV-5R and the UV-82L HTs on Amazon last night (and there were quite a few), I came across one review that said the transmit audio was "too loud" at the receiving end of the QSO, as if the deviation was set too high. Normally, a signal that loud would chop right out of the repeater if it was overdeviating by any great amount (I've heard a few such overdeviated signals, but never anything that actually was so severely overdeviated that it sounded overly choppy or even unreadable). Have any of you with Baofeng HTs had similar experiences with this, and if so, how did you handle it? Does the HT have any kind of variable control to set maximum deviation, or is it set at the factory by a fixed resistor? As cheap a price as the Baofeng handhelds go for, I wouldn't be surprised if the deviation was in fact set at a fixed value that could only be changed by physically replacing a resistor on the radio's PC board.

However, in the same review, I read that Baofeng handhelds are built rather solidly, like professional radios used by police departments and such. The battery charger, however, is not built quite that well; in fact, one person said the charger was "crap", while the radio itself works very well. Seems that at least one of those chargers developed a problem that caused the LED status indicators to flash on and off at random. The charger itself, according to one review, was very simple; open the case and you will find only one IC, a couple of LEDs, and the usual switch to shut off the charger when the HT was removed from the charging well. With the chargers that had blinking LEDs, my best guess would be something went haywire with that IC, which could very easily result in either no charge or the charger severely overcharging the battery.

I also wonder why Baofeng, in the instruction manual for the UX-5R (and probably the newer UV-82L as well), which I downloaded and studied last night, states that only battery packs approved for use in their own handhelds may be used with these radios. Are the Baofeng lithium-ion battery packs that much different from packs using rechargeable AA cells (such as the pack in my Yaesu FT-207R) that the use of a garden-variety battery pack could actually damage or even destroy a Baofeng radio? After all, a battery pack is a battery pack, is it not? Seems to me the Baofeng LiIon packs must have special circuitry built in to them to prevent overcharging, or there could be some other feature that makes standard battery packs unsuitable for use with these rigs. Is there some other major difference between these packs and ordinary rechargeable ones?

If the answer is yes, I can see why Baofeng warns against using other types of rechargeable packs, but if the answer is no, I would conclude that there may be no danger whatsoever in using other types of packs with Baofeng radios; the company simply may not want people to use off-brand batteries in these radios, even if the battery pack is the same voltage and current rating (to say nothing of the same size) as the LiIon pack originally supplied with the HT.