The Best Walkie-Talkies for Everyday Use (2024)

I’ve been a staff writer covering games and hobbies for Wirecutter since 2022. I’m an avid camper, and I’ve used personal radios to keep in touch with friends at theme parks, at robotics events, and in the backwoods and on the mountains of Colorado.

For this guide:

When I first moved to Colorado, my partner, who had been living here for years before me, was excited to take me up one of the state’s many fourteeners. Knowing my outdoorsy limitations—I was a city boy more accustomed to board-gaming than mountaineering—we decided to get a set of walkie-talkies in case I needed to tap out while she continued to the peak.

Not being a Wirecutter writer, she naturally went to Amazon and got the best-selling pair. But on the mountain, they worked for all of 10 minutes before the signal devolved into a garbled mess of static, leaving me stranded, without a clue as to where she was or how she was doing.

If you too like to spend time with friends in the great outdoors—or at large events—the walkie-talkies we recommend in this guide won’t leave you in the lurch, searching for a signal. We focused on models that broadcast on the Family Radio Service, the license-free broadcast channel in the US. These radios are useful for communicating whenever cell phones would be inconvenient to use or unreliable due to lack of service—think camping, hiking, skiing, rock climbing, boating, or simply hanging at the beach.

Still, it’s important to remember the limitations of this technology. For one thing, these radios can broadcast only at certain frequencies (462 MHz to 467 MHz) and are limited to a maximum broadcast power of 2 watts (or 0.5 watts on certain channels). This puts strict limits on their range.

Many manufacturers advertise ranges up to 30 miles or more, which, while technically possible, is feasible only in ideal conditions and with direct line of sight between the radios. In the real world—where the weather, landscape, and architecture don’t often play so nice—you can expect the best FRS radios to give you 1 to 5 miles of range at most.

After extensive research, we decided to look into radios with the following qualities:

Note that these radios generally aren’t a good choice for holding private conversations or transmitting sensitive information. Some companies advertise radios with “privacy channels,” which they bill as sub-channels designed to isolate your conversation, but such claims are misleading. What the feature really does is block transmissions on the main channel from reaching you. Anyone on the main channel can still hear anything you say on the privacy channel.

To test the radios on our short list, I went on multiple hikes and outdoor adventures. On these hikes, I distributed the handsets to my friends, and we discussed their more subjective qualities—aspects such as how intuitive they were to set up and use, as well as how secure they felt when we clipped them onto our backpacks or belts. We also tested their real-world range in environments ranging from dense forest to mountaintop tundra.

In addition, I took the 10 finalists for a walk around downtown Denver. I kept track of how far I was from my house (measured by my Apple Watch), and I periodically messaged my partner in our backyard to gauge the signal quality and strength. This was an important test, since an urban landscape is one of the more challenging environments for an FRS signal.

Finally, to test battery life, I gauged how the batteries held up during use according to their battery indicators, and I also measured standby time by fully charging each handset and letting it run until it died.

The Rocky Talkie Mountain Radio set of walkie-talkies was a standout in our testing, both in range and in more subjective evaluations such as ruggedness, ergonomics, and usability. These handsets consistently ranked among the best performers in every test I ran, they were easy to set up and use, and they lasted through every camping trip and hike I took them on with plenty of battery to spare.

They have great range, even in challenging conditions. The Rocky Talkie radios were troupers throughout all of our outdoor adventures. They consistently delivered a solid signal that allowed us to communicate easily, whether I was chatting with someone across a busy cityscape or checking in with companions while hiking through forests.

Their carabiner clips offer a solid connection point. The integrated carabiner clips—one set into the rubber case of the handset and the other attached to a springy cord—are convenient for hooking your radio onto a backpack, a vest, or any other sort of loop on your gear.

The radio isn’t quite as convenient if you hook it on a belt loop, which keeps the speaker and microphone far away from your mouth and ears, but other walkie-talkies’ belt clips presented the same issue, and we preferred the flexibility of the carabiners.

If you drop them, they bounce right back. This handset is made of a hard plastic encased in a rubber outer shell that protects the radio well. The Rocky Talkie radios also have an IP56 rating, so they’ll hold up well in rainy, snowy, or otherwise wet conditions but shouldn’t be fully submerged in water.

They’re simple to use, and it’s hard to accidentally change settings. Instead of positioning the controls on the face of each handset, as on most radios we tested, Rocky Talkie placed two rubberized buttons on the side for changing volume and setting privacy codes, in addition to the large push-to-talk button above those and a rocker switch at the top.

With this arrangement, almost every button press has to be intentional. It prevents accidental channel switching, a problem that we had with a few other models we tested. The rocker switch at the top is particularly good at preventing accidental presses, but it’s also a bit harder to operate (though not impossible) while you’re wearing big, bulky gloves. We don’t mind that trade-off—we’d rather work a bit harder in gloves than change channels by mistake.

They offer a long-lasting battery and convenient USB-C charging. The Rocky Talkie radios lasted more than four days in our standby test, and they held up well in real-world situations, dropping only to about a 60% charge after a three-day camping trip.

These walkie-talkies charge via USB-C, and you probably already own an appropriate cable and charger (for your smartphone or another device) that you can use with them, in addition to the cable and plug that ship with each radio. We prefer this kind of charging to the dedicated charging cradles that a lot of the other tested models come with.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

If you want a great set of radios that won’t break the bank but will provide reliable communication in a wide range of conditions, the Midland T10 X-Talker pair is a steal. These minuscule handsets (each weighs just under 4 ounces) pack a surprising punch, delivering a better signal than radios multiple times their price.

But they fall short of our top pick in range, battery life, sturdiness and usability, so we recommend them only if low weight or a low price is your foremost concern.

They perform as well as or better than more expensive radios. These tiny, affordable radios—priced at $30 for two handsets at this writing, $190 less than our top pick—kept up with the Rocky Talkie Mountain Radio set in most of my tests. They retained a solid signal in the backwoods and through moderately forested terrain, and their results were above average in my city test.

They’re especially light. If you’re loading a pack, and you want the best communications with the least possible weight, these radios fit the bill nicely. At 3.95 ounces each, they’re the lightest walkie-talkies we tested by almost a full ounce.

That weight-saving design also means that they aren’t particularly sturdy. They feel a bit like toys, and the belt clip is especially flimsy in comparison with those on other models we tested. For the price, however, we think this is a tolerable trade-off.

They don’t use a rechargeable internal battery. Unlike our top pick, these walkie-talkies use three garden-variety AAA batteries for power. That said, the T10 X-Talker set outlasted five of the other nine radios we tested.

Midland also doesn’t include a charging cradle—the T10 X-Talker pair is the only model we tested without this feature—so if you opt to use rechargeable AAAs, you need to pick up a good charger. Although the use of AAAs may seem inconvenient, since you have to carry backup batteries for longer outings, it also means that you can use these handsets away from an outlet for an extended period of time.

They include more niche features than our top pick. The T10 X-Talker set offers VOX operation and access to NOAA weather alerts, two features that our top pick lacks.

But we found that those functions are much less important than range, durability, and battery life during normal use. The Rocky Talkie radios outclassed this Midland pair in those key areas, so we concluded that most people would get more utility out of our top pick, if they can afford its higher price tag.

If text communication is important to you: The Motorola Talkabout T803 pair might be a good option. These handsets connect to Android or Apple phones via Bluetooth, and you can use the Talkabout app to adjust settings and share texts with paired radios. They also claim to be able to share location information, but we were never able to make that work in our testing.

These walkie-talkies use the radio frequency of the handset, instead of a cell signal, to send texts. It’s a great idea that would be especially useful for people with hearing loss who are adventuring in the backcountry. We just wish it worked more consistently.

In our tests, although the radio was still sending our voice communication just fine, the text feature would start to fail after about half a mile. But if texting is vital to you, and you don’t plan on being that far apart from your companion, it might be a valuable option to have.

Our testers particularly liked the Backcountry Access BC Link 2.0 Radio on hikes. Its design, with the speaker and microphone connected to the broadcasting core by a springy cable, was especially convenient for clipping to a backpack strap and a belt. But almost all of the handsets we tested had plugs for similar accessories (albeit at an additional cost), and the BC Link 2.0 Radio didn’t perform as well as either of our picks in our range testing. This was also the most expensive pair we tested.

The Cobra ACXT345 set was one of the worst performers in our range test and had disappointing battery life. Pair that with cheap-feeling build quality and an annoying control layout, and it’s a hard set to recommend.

The DeWalt DXFRS800 set performed second-best in our range tests, and the radios are quite sturdy with an IP67 rating and a dense, rubberized exterior. But our testers were annoyed to find that the push-to-talk button is on the face of the radio, so you have to hold it differently than most other walkie-talkies; in addition, you have to remove the belt clip every time you want to use its charging cradle. These small annoyances were enough for us to recommend the Rocky Talkie set instead.

The Midland LXT630VP3 walkie-talkies were poor performers in our range testing, though they worked well within a half-mile radius. They also had the worst battery life.

The Motorola Talkabout T265 pair was one of the worst performers in our range tests, providing a garbled transmission with lots of static at around a half a mile and dropping out completely after a mile in the city test. It also was the second model to die in our standby battery test.

The small Motorola Talkabout T270 radio also performed poorly in our range tests, though it had better battery life than its T265 cousin.

In our range tests, the Motorola Talkabout T475 set was just an average performer. It has a number of extra features, including an integrated flashlight, an automatic pairing button, and a vibrating alert when called. But we rarely used those features, and this particular Motorola radio had a habit of turning itself on when it was in a bag. That could mean a higher likelihood of its dying on you, right when you need it.

This article was edited by Ben Keough and Erica Ogg.