Midland MXT275 vs MXT295 – Real World Range Test & Comparison

What's going on guys? We are back with another video. My name's Armando and I've been rocking the Midland MXT275 GMRS radio in my Colorado ZR2 for a few years now and Midland just sent me out their brand new radio which is the MXT295. So I'm going to be doing a little bit of a comparison video on the two radios, do some real world testing and give you my thoughts and feedback so you guys can decide which radio is best for you. So let's jump right into it. Now, you may be wondering what's the difference between the 275 and the 295 models. They're actually really comparable. That's why I made this video. They are both GMRS radios. They are both 15-watt units. The big difference being the 295 is a 100% wireless Bluetooth handset, and your 275 is your typical hardwired cable with your handset. So I'm going to be showing right now coming up how easy it is to or difficult it is to swap the 295 from the 275 unit. I'm going to swap it in the truck and then we're going to be doing some real world testing as mentioned before where I'm going to compare to see if the signal strength is the same and then we're going to be testing how far I can get this wireless handset away from the truck before I start losing connection. So I just finished pulling out the 275 from underneath the dash. So see here I have it mounted up behind here. I do have a full video on the channel on how that's mounted so if you want to check that out if you have a Colorado you can check it out in the link in the description below or after this video but I wanted to point out that the 275 power and the 295 power cables are completely different so if you are upgrading from a 275 it is completely different you got this white plug here for the 275 and then the 295 has this style of plug so I'm going to have to do a little bit of extra work here to get this swapped over so the plan is because I have these directly hardwired to the battery they normally come with a little cigarette adapter but I don't care for that I rather just have it directly hardwired and it's a lot cleaner of an installation so I'll have to be cutting this connector off and then I'll be splicing the cable with the existing cable that I have there so I'll just have to disconnect it from the battery and so we can get this wired up so about 10 minutes of work and we are all done battery is hooked up again and we have spliced here our new connection so that way we're all connected here before making everything nice and tidy and tucking this controller back up into the dash we're going to do a test to make sure everything is good so we're going to turn on here see it says power on searching for the base there it is connected to the base and there we go wonderful so now that we know everything is working I'm gonna put everything back up in the dash and then we'll go for our test drive so we just tested everything and everything works the one thing I may do and change versus the other unit since the wireless handset and the base unit are completely different as far as how they power on and on and off i'm probably going to put the base unit onto my switch panel over there since as you can see the base unit technically stays on 24 7 because it's constantly looking for that signal versus uh the 275 i would turn it on and off via the power button up here obviously it would have a little bit of power but it wouldn't be actively looking for a signal and stuff like that so i don't with the truck sitting sometimes i don't want this draining my battery so i think i am going to put it to the switch which luckily for me is really easily done because right now i have the cable it's this cable right here goes straight to the battery all i got to do is move that cable to my switch box here and then the power cable and then we can have it connected via the switch panel but we'll get everything buttoned up here and then we'll go for our range test. Just want to touch on some really cool unique features that I noticed over the 275. So first and foremost the base it comes with to attach is magnetic. So this little piece I just attached it to my arm but it's technically it just has a double-sided piece of tape so you can put it anywhere on your center console or whatever. And it is an extremely strong magnet that prevents it from going anywhere. And the overall screen is a lot larger, a little more clearer, has a lot more information on it which is really nice from my testings as far as my quality sounds about the same and same thing with the audio I would say just sounds maybe a little bit more crisp in this over the 275 but it's not a night and the difference, it's not a huge noticeable difference so moving on to the real world testing I'm obviously not going to be out on the trail testing this, we're just going to be testing it here in the city so well how we're going to test is my wife Nicole will be in our house in the same room in the same seat with my old five watt handheld GMRS radio I will then take the truck and drive down the same road in the same direction and frequently keep checking in until we get to the point where we lose reception and at that point I'll mark it on the map drop a pin and we'll repeat the same process with the new 295 and just see if the ranges are comparable and there's no difference with it being hardwired versus bluetooth which i don't think so my hypothesis i don't think so but it's worth testing so we're going to test that and see what our results are all right so we have already started our testing and i am just driving straight down the same road and checking in every uh about 30 seconds or so with nicole and once we get to that point where we lose that connection i'll drop a pin swap the units out and then perform the same test and report back with the results well there you have it with that small quick little test the 275 and the 295 as far as range distance is almost identical and don't be hindered by these numbers as far as it looking like a really short distance i think the flaw was here as far as the range was due to the five watt handheld nicole was using it's a $35 unit on Amazon the antenna isn't that great and that's where I think our limitation was as I mentioned previously the she was also indoors she wasn't outside so we are in the city so there's a lot of obstacles and things in the way so overall I think it came out pretty good and like I said the 295 had a little bit of an edge but there's so many variables that I'm going to call them dead even. So now we're going to do a real world test here of the handheld. So I have the truck on parked on the side of the street and I'm going to just slowly start walking away from the truck talking with Nicole to figure out the maximum range we have before the handheld loses connection with the base. So after a little back and forth testing we have determined this is the max range where I'm standing. For reference the truck is just yonder back there so I'm going to put on Gaia GPS I put a pin of where I'm standing and I'm going to put a pin of where the truck is and the exact distance will appear here on screen. My guesstimate would be like 120 feet but I haven't done the exact measurements yet but that's the maximum range we got where it was still clear. technically I could still walk a few more feet that way but it would just get a little robotic-y she said she could still make out what I was saying it was just a little uh it was not clear so this is the distance we determined that it was clear which I think is pretty good considering the base is mounted up underneath the dash so I'm sure if the base was out more exposed I'd probably have a lot longer range but with it mounted currently that is its current distance which still plenty of distance if I just came up an obstacle and I parked my truck that would be more than enough distance for me to spot somebody coming up an obstacle. So I wanted to provide my final thoughts after installation and testing with the 295 whether it's worth the upgrade over the 275 or not or if you're considering either or. So one thing I want to make clear I haven't yet tested the battery life of the handheld yet at the time of filming this video. This is being filmed right before the Red Rock Rally which if you don't know what that is that's the event I host down in Moab. This is the third annual and we have multiple days of multiple hours of trail rides and I will be thoroughly testing this and seeing how much battery life how many hours I can get on a single charge and I will probably pin that in the comments down below how long the battery lasted for that but my final thoughts regarding this is for installation the 295 has it simply because you can install this literally anywhere in the vehicle and even in the trunk and you could have this up front not worrying about having to run a cable even how i had it mounted before i had to took me a couple hours to route a cable from underneath the dash to the driver's side so that way I could have the wired 275. That being considered, you don't also have to worry about charging the 275 ever. So sometimes I know I can be forgetful and you forget to charge this, then you don't have a radio. You have to have it wired technically because you have to plug it into the car so that way you're able to charge it while you're using it. Another point goes to the 295 as far as in my opinion the menus I don't know if my 275 because my 275 is about two to three years old so I'm not sure if they've updated it but I found the menu on the 295 a lot more user-friendly and a lot easier to find certain settings that you're looking for versus 275 again I'm not sure if that's just a software change that they did or with it having a bigger screen they can put a lot more information on there I'm not sure definitely a lot easier to use and I think honestly the biggest benefit which it really comes down to your use of the 295 is being able to get out of your truck and spot for somebody with the handheld I do that all the time most of the time I'm usually yelling at the driver if obviously with the hand signals but I'm usually yelling at the driver so it's a nice little feature now to just hop that with that and not having to yell and I can guide the driver up a certain obstacle so I think that personally is my favorite feature. Well hopefully you guys enjoyed this video if you did make sure to leave a like and subscribe for more awesome content and I'll see you guys in the next video.