The advertisements are misleading. They advertise absolutely no fees, and NATIONWIDE coverage. That suggests to consumers that they work ANYWHERE. They advertise that they are superior to cell phones if there is a catastrophic event disabling cell service, WHEN THEY ACTUALLY USE CELL SERVICE TO WORK!
I was unswear as well that they were $50 each a year to renew. I can confirm that they do work great and I took them to a dead spot for my cell phone where my ATT struggles and they worked perfectly. So they must be using multiple carriers like they state. They use 4G and LTE. If you have a small business, hobby and need to talk to a group of people at one time and switch to a single person in the group they are perfect.. but yes the justification needs to be there for $50 each a year. Perfect for my needs of digging for history in the woods 👍
I use my Motorola dongle. This talks to satellites and works to message anywhere whether I have cell service or not. Ben using it for a year and it works flawless. I'm in Mexico and my wife is in Florida
Had Netels for years before GREEDY ASS SPRINT took over charging outrageous monthly fees, Nextels were awesome and I easily used mine in Colorado springs speaking clearly to my employee in Brekenridge. I hate the pussified smart phones. Will be purchasing these talkies.
This is posted on their site: "With the on-going crisis in the Middle East & Europe, the threat of Cyberattacks on the USA, and the uncertainty of WW3 you simply CAN NOT RELY on Cell Phones and Internet for Communications in the Future!" How can you say you can rely on them when they run on cellular towers?
😇I once put in the HVAC for a company called NEXTEL. Our company used them for many years. Think they were bought out by Sprint. We could pretty much talk coast to coast with them. Fun tech when it first came out. Man i'm getting old.
Nextel was bought by Sprint, but those networks have been shut down for years. And, Sprint was bought out by T-Mobile, so that network is also shut down, and in the process of being rebuilt as TMO sites. If there is already a TMO site at that location, the old Sprint site will convert to Dish.
They are back in a way. Motorola (Who actually made the old Nextel radios) has the TLK system. They work off Verizon network and work pretty well. Cost is about $30/month per unit.
I hope they fail. Their CEO signed off on marketing saying "No Monthly Fees-No Subscriptions" No Hidden Fees" but there are yearly fees. What a joke. Their business model is to put that in the fine print then after a year you go to use it, it doesnt work, you call em and have to pay $50 each for them to work again.
Not cool, should mention it it right up front. I was hoping for the best because they are great walkies and can benefit many people/businesses but the whole idea of them being free and deleting people comments from there ads if they mention the charge is not cool.
If they are using cell towers/cell coverage, what happens when the cell towers are down? An EMP attack? I read the fine print. There is a service fee after the first year $50.
These will not work without cell phone service. Yes $50 each per year to renew. Would be cool if it was $50 for the pair considering you need at least two of them.
@@CrochetNewsNetwork mine stayed active the whole time. Our cells were down but the Rapids stayed up on 4G all day. No idea how but they did. Kept chatting from RI to NH without any issues.
@@IffySignalsyour ATT cell went down but the radio didnt? Well, my not ATT phone didnt go down. That's probably why the radio still worked because it doesn't run off exclusively ATT towers, pretty simple. That doesn't provide legitimacy to these at all.
I had a set of cobra walkie talkies said 15 miles. I got about a half mile on them good thing I did not pay much for them.. These radio talkies seem pretty good. other then the yr fee after the first yr.. Thanks for sharing..
Yea Danny, i guess for our hobby if you go detecting frequently and have a regular group or digging buddy then it would be good. I can definitely see many other uses like small business ect..
So, it says they are to be used when cell service goes down. I'm an old guy so when you say that you have to have service for them to work...doesn't that contradict itself?
SUPER dishonest of them to say no monthly fees or subscriptions, EVER! Then they have $50 per radio per year. That is technically a subscription (product will not work without it) and could theoretically be broken down into a “monthly fee” but technically it is a yearly fee. Not sure why they false advertise like that and get very defensive and even delete comments mentioning it on their facebook site. Might be cool products but their shady marketing and how they try to hide there are in fact fees makes my decision to pass on them. 🤷🏻♂️
the $50 annual was pretty straight forward to me. I guess some people don't understand an annual registration fee, v. a monthly subscription. But oh well. I love mine.
@@MSgtPierce its not an “annual registration”. they are charging you for a new sim card. pay by use sim cards dont cost $50, they are ripping you off.. plus.. theyre playing word semantics… “no monthly fees ever!”…. okay.. a $50 yearly fee.. whoch translates to a little under $4/mo. It’s still a fee… monthly or annually. it’s deceptive marketing. and like i said.. feel free to look up “global-ptt poc radio G1”… they cost $60-80 bucks from china and theyre charging you a fortune for it. Plus, you’re locked into a “mother may i” situation with them. they force you to buy more radios from them.. THEY have to add the new radios to your account.. if you want something as simple as the name of the radio (“contact name”) changed it has to go through them, adding members to your group has to go through them. Thats BS. If you buy the radios direct instead of this 3rd party rebranding scam, you get access to control your account alllll by yourself whenever and however you want. add new radios anytime you want.. add people to your group yourself, anytime you want. No thanks! These guys are nothing but importers of chinese radios, rebranding them as something of their own, and then locking you into paying them $50 a piece for the rest of your life and giving up all control to them. LOL. Suckers.
OK, But if cell coverage is down and cell phones don't work, neither will these. Right? I'm looking for a goof hand-held radio for when the grid goes down.
You need something like GMRS, MURS, or ideally, a HAM license for emergency radio use. If there are GMRS repeaters in your area, you can often use them to communicate a long ways on GMRS. HAM radios can literally (on HF frequencies) talk across the world under the right conditions, and with the right knowledge and equipment.
So they are really not emergency SHTF radios. If cell towers go down, these go down. I am looking at the 2 meter handheld radios. They rely on repeater stations. So it may be that if cell towers go down, repeater stations will too. I was hoping that these might be a solution, but apparently not really.
If you want long distance without repeaters, you will need 10 meter, 20 meter, or higher band ham radio. Those are mostly vehicle mount or home base type radios, not handheld. Handheld 2 meter has 4-8 mile range without repeaters.
I ordered two to try out on our farm. We’re spread out from the north end of our county to the south and west. We have private radios on a repeater but it doesn’t work everywhere and can be plagued with problems during bad weather due to the poor location of the antenna. These rapid radios work but not everywhere, I’ve got one area along the Mississippi River where we have cell service but the rapid radios won’t work. I’ve emailed the company and they sent out slightly different radios but I’m still waiting for them to be activated. If the new radios won’t work I’ll be asking for a refund. I think their advertising is very misleading.
@@10bbremer correct. The great thing is that they work with all major carriers and are not just on one. Some providers have bad signal in some areas and others are better. Rapid Radios has verified that there LTE and 4G is onboard with all major carriers. How it picks and chooses by signal i have no idea.
it would have to be an area with 0 cell service of any kind forthen to not work , these have sim cards that operate on ALL the main cellular service carriers. The FCC has a map that shows All companies coverage, 4g ,5g, and LTE . not many places with 0 coverage, now if the chi-coms knock out the Entire cell network, or the power grid, then nope they dontwork, however, if that happens Im probably going to be trying to survive, and not doing normal chatting or business on a radio. Just my opinion of course.
@@jeffrooke8439 exactly. Weird thing is i have been inside a few stores and have perfect cell signal on my phone (ATT) but nothing on the radios, and they will not work. As soon as i leave the store the signal comes back.
I live in a very rural area, and it's not uncommon to experience zero coverage. For those who live in a more urban setting, it's a cool product, otherwise it's a no go for me.
Will work if the shtf just not if the shit hits the cell towers 😆. I think they will work outside of the US if you let the company know what country ahead of time. I heard them mention that.
Thanks for the video. I like their advertising: "100% NO MONTHLY FEES or SUBSCRIPTIONS FEES - EVER!" After first year, $50 yearly renewal. What a joke. Neat toy I guess, better off with some Baofeng handhelds. I bet the cost of the (2) radios ($400) more than covers their cost to use cell towers to distribute the super compressed audio for a few years... I can't imagine the call quality being that good at all.
Yeah, looks like a good product for the most part, nice build quality, just need to know what you're getting into. Was thinking about using them for off-roading, but I'll stick to FRS. @@IffySignals
@@BarnStangz you should really check out the gmrs radios. You can buy a license to use gmrs repeaters in your area and the license is fairly cheap and it expires in 10 years and no test to take either.
Any company that deletes questions in comments on Facebook that doesn’t favor their product and then removes the post is not a company that I want to be involved with
I would have thought PMR would have been more practical. I think you call it FRS in the USA. Shorter range, typically 1-2 miles but anything over that and a cell phone would be more useful. Especially as the RAPID radios need cell tower coverage. Also, there are no licenses or fees with PMR and for a decent pair they are about half the price or less.
Being an Amateur Radio operator for 62 years, I know CB, beyond local range, is plagued with skip signals much of the year, random in nature, being in the High Frequency bands. 😊
no they don't answer the phone. perhaps this was paid or made for by the company. as far as emailing them i sent 5 emails no response. yes they are opening themselves up to a class action suit without telling consumers about the yearly fee. sounds scammishhhh
I am not affiliated with them, i was looking for walkies that would give me greater range while we are out in the woods. Definitely different than others who have concerns about needing a radio when the towers go down. I was not looking for anything like that. I definitely understand the $50 a year concerns.
Its a walkie talkie, you can talk with a group of people at one time or one at a time. Its a connivance. When it comes to service though, yes you need cell phone signal.
Yes! Cross country. They said they are paired up with all cell phone carriers. I had no idea they existed either. You add a bunch of radios and talk to a single person or the whole group at once. They have a car kit too. 👍
Exactly. and with Zello you can get a gateway to link your actual radios to the data network for cross compatibility. These "radios" are no more than the radioditty LTE models you can get online.
@rollingcode3 from my understanding, these Rapid radios bounce off the nearest tower. I think normal cell phones only use their towers. I could be wrong
These are only as strong as the network and your wallet. A 5 watt VHF HT with a good antenna will serve you far better in the woods. These are for the Disney Land crowd.
I have ATT and these still worked, i have noticed lately that it loses signal inside of stores in my area where i do have full cell signal. Thats kinda odd.
Lol! No monthly, no service, but yearly you need to pay $50 each. Ill pay it for how much ill be using them, they definitely should be more up front about this $50.
Don't believe what anyone says if the grid goes off. You need something that works without the grid. Can't rely on these phone towers. If something happens, you need something powerful enough to talk to your love. Ones show us something like that. These work off the towers, they're no good. You might we'll just keep Cellphone
I was surprised yesterday during the outage. Our cell phones were down all day but the rapids kept 4g. The outage may have only been ATT. The Rapids never went down.
If there's ever any kind of societal collapse or apocalyptic type of scenario cell phone towers will be out of service just as quick as everything else, rendering these things useless. In a true end of the world scenario you'd be better off with a good cb setup or even better, ham radio.
Its worth it to people who like/need simple push to talk. Yes most comments are about the fact that they are not mentioning it/comments mentioning it being removed from there post.
These can be very useful though for groups, work, or in a case where you are digging in dirt like i am with a group of people and want to communicate with them all at one time and not want to potentially damage an expensive phone.
I spoke to them directly on the phone. They are based in the USA. Design and customer service is definitely in the USA. The radios seem to be made in China which they are not hiding because in the box was a tiny piece of paper from China. I asked them “what would happen if you went out of business?” and they replied that the radios will work with any Sim card and they had no concerns with there business. “Not Happening” was there exact reply to that. They were shipped from MI USA and shipping was here within two days.
Do not be fooled by this advertorial. These are not radios in the sense that they do not transmit and receive RF signals to each other. These are internet connected, via cell phone towers, intercoms. If the cell service goes down or has a weak signal these will not work. Save your money and get real radios.
Decent product but deceiving advertising and website. Very elusive faq on their website and no mention of the annual costs. May be a giid peoduct but they are scummy marketers
