Icom IC-450

Excellent high quality radio – AO6 must have been overwhelmed by all the settings and failed to read the manual. You can turn the beep off, and there's also a volume setting for the beep to turn it down! Unit is well built, feels much more solid than equivalent GME and has a larger heat sink, but as a result the case is also larger and harder to find space for. The GME unit… Read more

also appears to have an additional speaker in the case where the IC450 requires an external speaker. Any 4ohm speaker capable of 5W connected via a jack available from any electronics store will do the job at very little expense and vastly improve audio quality.

The manual is not particularly descriptive and assumes knowledge of similar radios - some functions are not explained at all (eg grounding of mic, AF mute, etc). This isn't really an issue as most CB use is only changing volumes and channels, the additional features aren't strictly necessary.

The scanning speed and other functions are not as highly spec'd as some competitors, but the radio is solid and has clear TX/RX which is of higher importance to me.

Have had no issues in 2yrs of occasional use.

Good unit, probably more than I needed – I needed a UHF to use for 4wding, camping and for my job in outdoor education. The criteria was for a durable remote head UHF that was easy to use. I purchased the UHF from a seller I'd used before on EBay, and installed myself as I've done a number of times before. I mated the Icom with a GME AE4018BK1 6.6dBi antenna mounted on the bullbar. I've… Read more

tucked the main unit away in the glove box, and have the head unit/handset on the dash. So far after three months of use I'm very happy with the radio.

I settled on this Icom unit, as the comparable GME TX3550 that I have in our Prado was slightly more expensive. I've been very happy with the GME unit, and to be honest it probably suits me more as a 'Plug & Play' option, whereas the Icom unit is much more customisable. I don't use CTCSS or other functions on my UHF, just the public channels, and there are much more features on the Icom than what I'll ever use. It's very well made, and I've no doubt it'll give many years of service. I've used cheaper Oricom UHF units in the past, and they just haven't been up to the vibrations on the dirt roads I operate on sometimes. For a few dollars more the Icom should do well for a long time. In terms of durability, this is at least on par with the GME TX3550, and possibly better.

My only criticism is that on full volume, the speaker is very loud with the beeps and noises it makes as you change channel, but the incoming transmissions can be lost in the noise of my vehicle. I should note that I drive a Land Rover Defender, which are noisy vehicles, and to fix this I've fitted an extension speaker. This has fixed the problem completely and I can hear all transmissions flawlessly. The quality of the transmission is also very good.