Touch the Future Now at Staples
The T6500 performed pretty much as expected; while GMRS radios claim to be effective up to five miles, this is a best-case scenario and is rarely achieved with radios that have low power ratings (the T6500 is a 1.0-watt radio). Of course, environmental factors such as terrain, geographical location, and other radio frequency interference will also affect signal strength and can severely limit your range. We tested the T6500 in New York City, at the beach, and in a heavily wooded state park. We also took them along to a sprawling, three-story mall on Long Island to see how the privacy channels performed.
In the city, FRS and GMRS communications were limited to about 1 mile, not uncommon for Manhattan. However, we received better results at the beach, where the FRS signal remained strong for as far as 1.8 miles before completely dropping out. The GMRS range was closer to 3 miles, a good 2 miles short of the advertised 5-mile claim. In the woods, where range is all-important for hikers, the T6500 was just mediocre, averaging about a mile on FRS channels and 2.5 miles on the GMRS frequencies. We picked a good day to test these radios at the mall; the FRS channels were jammed with shoppers and mall employee communications, but we had no problem finding several private channels, thanks to Motorola's exclusive digital Interference Eliminator codes.
Battery life was solid. The included nickel-cadmium batteries are rated for 12 hours at 5/5/90, or 5 percent talk time, 5 percent receive time, and 90 percent standby; we surpassed that by an hour in our tests. We got 2 hours of talk/receive time, which is also good. The rated time with AA batteries is 30 hours using the aforementioned breakdown.
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