Motorola Talkabout® T9500 Two Way Radio

Pros: Scan function, Compander, QT function.
Cons: Range not close to advertised. Poor battery life with supplied pack.

Motorola T9500 Review FCC ID: K7GT9500 An FCC Issued GMRS license is required to use these radios. Power Output: 1.03 Watts GMRS .11 Wats Low/FRS This radio has a nice attractive package that fits comfortably in the hand. Its design ...

Pros: Any potential strengths of this radio are overshadowed by its prime weakness.
Cons: Very poor sound quality --voices are often inaudible.

I have a pair of the T9510R radios purhcased in Canada -- same radio as the T900XLR sold in the US.  The is the worst sounding radio I've ever heard.  When using the radio, you'll often be uttering, "Could you reopeat that?  To make matters worst, the call tones cannot be heard outdoors unless you have the radio held to your ear -- defeats the opurpose of call tones.

Pros: Not much. A few nice features but poor sound quality overshadows them
Cons: Poor sound quality and poor battery life.

Bought these radios in Canada from Costco because they were on sale. Sadly the will be going back.

Sound quality is dismal and you spend more time asking the other person to repeat themselves than you do communicating. My friends on the same outing were using Cobras and the sound quality was far superior.

Battery life was poor and the new radios were dying after only an hour or two of limited use. I noticed that the battery pack that comes with the radios is 3AA batteries at 600 mAh. Its really too bad that they would do this when NiMH rechargeables are now in the 2200+ mAh range.

Its unfortunate that Motorola, a company that was once synonymous with quality communication equipment, has sold out their name to another company ("Giant International") producing cheap chinese crap.

Pros: Appearance Price Battery life [24 hrs. on standby]
Cons: Difficult to hold Not ready for prime time - suggest U buy something else.

Comments based on:
1. Ownership period = 6 months
2. Purchased for family use, non-commercial
3. Used for communications between family members between cars on a road trip, shopping mall contact, contact on cruise ship between family, etc.
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Summary: This product worked less than half the time. With batteries fully charged, and the other person 2 city blocks away (clear line of sight between units, and no radio interference detected), transmission was detected by other unit about half the time over a one hour period of testing. In other words, the other unit did NOT detect the signal from the other unit. This was tried several times, with each unit trying to signal the other. When the units did connect, the voice quality was only average.
Did not work bulk of the time of ownership (various operators, times during day, location [cars, walking, on board a cruise ship]
Features of the units were marginal in utility for the average home owner.