Abell A-80 Honest Review

It's been a while since I last posted here. Quite a number of things happened involving me and were well written in other blogs who I featured. Regarding on the Hj Jamain Family gathering at Kuantan and the latest was the PEMANCAR visit to Gunung Senyum. You could view the blogs on these two from my Blog List. Both events were extraordinarily fun and hope we could do it more often.

As for the above title, I had the chance to test out this new model for a week or two. I got it from my supplier and I intended to market this model and currently as their sole agent for Pantai Timur. Here is the review, an honest review from my personal point of view:

When I first got the package, the first impression was, the packaging featured a typical China made product. The item came with a transceiver, a lanyard, a rechargeable battery, a desktop charger set and an operating manual. One thing that I noticed from the manual, the English was well written and easy to understand, but too simplistic.


At the first glance of this item, the product built quality of its transceiver is solid, and having a good size, nice for the grip on my medium sized hand. The weight is just nice where it is not too heavy nor too light. It does not have the "plasticky" feeling on my hand.

The markings of the channel (16 channels) are very clear and sharp printed for easy reference and the printings looked well placed and aligned with the channel marking on the knob. Talking about knobs, the feeling while rotating them were good and not as flimsy as some other China made handhelds.

The volume knob on the other hand, does not have the volume level marking on the knob itself making it little hard to determine the volume of the radio while in operation. That is a bit of a downsider for this model where they should put at least a tiny dot on the knob to show its volume level indicator (imagine Motorola GP328 volume knob). Though it can be solved through DIY method.


The Push To Talk (PTT) button and the other two buttons are like normal buttons from other handheld models from other maker, just that pressing it felt solid and convincing. Not too hard or not too soft. Juts nice.

The battery fits snugly on the body with just one latch to lock and release. Once locked, it was very sturdy and we cannot see any gap between the body and the battery. The battery too won't budge if you try to move it back and forth when it is locked in place. This is a good thing to ensure proper contact to the battery power. The belt clip is like regular clips, can be pull out in case you need to do that. It has some kind of a small hook at the end of the clip (bottom part) so less worries from the risk of this radio falling off from your waist belt.


Beside the antenna (at the back) there is a small latch to fit your lanyard. More towards cosmetic I would say. Nice though if you want to have extra safety in case you don't want it to fell off during harsh usage.

The power comes with a nice 1600 mah Lithium Ion standard rechargeable battery. Lithium Ion means no memory effect and you don't need to discharge the battery in order to fully charge them. It's like these days mobile phone. The battery life was very good too. I did a 80% monitoring and 20% TXing and it basically would last 3-5 days. There were one day where I forgot to turn it off one whole night. Though this is purely subjective, at least you can get some idea on the battery life per full charge. The full charge duration (from its standard charger) should take you around 2-4 hours only.


The voice output could be better. The sound quality coming out from this radio is loud and solid enough for me to hear. It must be a better quality control to produce this radio and the speaker performs quite well. It can be improved on the production side to eliminate slight vibration of the body during a loud volume operations though.

The voice heard on the other party (when using this A80) was very clear and vivid. I was worried about our voice being like "talking while pinching your nose" kind of sound (like most China made radios) but this one proved I was wrong. It is as clear as Yaesu's VX7R's I might say.


The TX power of this radio is supposed to be 5W at high and 1W at low. The method for changing its TX power is pretty awkward; you have to turn off the radio, then by pressing the PTT, turn it on to have the other TX power. Do it again to change to other level. This was pretty annoying and it does not have any indication (like beep or so) to indicate whether it is in high mode or low mode. This should be changed by the manufacturer - it's cumbersome!!

One of the best part about this radio is, it's SIRIM approved! Yes, I saw the certification letter from SIRIM and this one has passed the test. This basically means, this item is legal to be sold in Malaysia without having to worry being interfered by the authority. If I am not mistaken, only Kenwood and Motorola having the SIRIM approved sticker for VHF radio in Malaysia at the moment. Correct me if I am wrong.


This radio is designed for professional use, so it is not field programmable by user. It means that we can't change the settings from the radio itself. It must go through programming with the computer using the right cable. Fret not, the software is free and the price of the cable is just around RM100.00 each.

I think that's about it. Its just a short review from my own point of view. Should any of you need more information, do contact me from the numbers given at the top right part of this blog. I am currently selling this item for UHF and VHF. It is fully covered with local warranty (1 year for radio and 6 months for battery & charger). Spare parts are available too.

Some of the highlights:

Pros
- solid built quality
- clear voice input (as heard by the other party)
- very good battery life (per single charge)

Cons
- volume knob without proper marking
- power output TX cannot be determined (low or high?)