ABBREE DM-F8 Digital Mobile Radio

Prompt shipping and service which is to be expected from the Brushbeater Store. The radios themselves are just a bit complicated and we are definitely not using them to their potential. While Brushbeater provided software to program them, the documentation provided by the company leaves a bit to be desired and there just aren’t a lot of tutorials or reviews that break it down Barney-style. Still, we plan on taking them to the next Brushbeater RTO class we attend and get some adult guidance about how to maximize the radio’s capabilities.
We 100% plan on doing business with the Brushbeater Store again and really can see any reason to look elsewhere for our needs!

First off let me say I'm no expert, but this radio is complicated to get the CPS to work. There are no real instructions on how to troubleshoot the installation of the software. Wish I had researched it more thoroughly I would've saved my money and bought a radio with better support for my first DMR. Don't get me wrong I like the radio for the features it offers at it's price point but I wish it had better support other than Scout sending you a .zip file.

Great value, as with buying a cheap UV5R two years ago, this DM-F8 has allowed me a entry point into this type of radio without breaking the bank. Just by using them and learning the different settings has increased my knowledge in the coms field. I am still working through the manual. The only inconvenience and this is on me; I am having trouble finding a thorough tutorial explaining everything in a concise manner when it comes to this radio. Such as some of the code settings for the digital setting. Greatly improved knowledge and capability with this radio in the past week. Thank you for the recommendation and providing this.

Ordered this as my first DMR radio. Honestly, I didn't know anything about DMR other than you can text without a secondary device like is required for analog, quite a few of the local police and fire are using it, and it has a ton of memory, so basically nothing. That being said, I found this radio a little hard to program because of my ignorance of what everything you need to put in was. Like the significance & meaning of color codes, talk groups, contacts, timeslots, etc. And to top it off, there doesn't seem to be a ton of video content (which is usually how I like to learn about these things, by seeing other people do them) that explains any of that well or at least I didn't think so. They talk very generally and don't give any structured examples, mostly they seem to be selling stuff or telling you what DMR is from a technical perspective, which I understand fully, but that has no bearing on actually using it. After spending a day figuring that part out by reading a few really good articles and seeing the information I needed to program on the BrandMeister website (which took me an hour or so of reading to stumble on), I was able to successfully understand the structure and terminology of DMR and program this radio and make contact with a repeater. I also began talking on them simplex with my brother who got one too. I found out all the police & fire around were using Tier III radios, so I won't be able to listen to that with this radio, but there are some on my daily drive using Tier II and I'll try to listen in on that, but haven't yet.

The radio is fully programmable from the unit itself, which is pretty awesome. The only thing I haven't been able to do is create a group from within the radio, but that's getting pretty comprehensive for from the menu programming and would be quite a bit of clicks. The CPP does a great job of making that easy anyway. I've tested all the features and find them to work great. That is except for encryption because I don't really know how to test it (as in attempt to break it, I know I can use it & how). One thing I've found is undersold or not even mentioned in the description is the GPS. It works great and gets a fast fix. Audio quality seems pretty good, you definitely get that digital sound but that's not the radio, it's the mode. I've used it for analog and it works/sounds great there too. If you want a good first DMR radio, I'd say this is a good option. If you already have a DMR radio, I can't really tell you because my experience with DMR is pretty stinkin low.

The biggest downside I have noticed so far is the lack of anyone using this exact one to see examples of it. I think there is exactly 1 video on youtube and he's just reviewing it and if you search for documentation there is nothing. But Scout sends you the CPP and the manual is actually very well written. The belt clip sucks, but I'll be putting it in a radio pouch anyway so that doesn't much matter. So far I can't find how to turn off the sound when you change channels it screams the number. I swear I saw it but haven't pinned it down yet. I know there's gotta be a way though. Last thing isn't really a negative, but you can put a custom image on the boot screen and I tried to put a picture I had, but it wanted a txt file. I opened the jpg with notepad and saved as txt and put it in. Didn't work of course but was worth a shot (probably extremely dumb attempt, but hey). Nothing seems to mention what size of photo it's looking for and back to the main downside, no one is using it & sharing info. So now my boot screen is black, and I don't really care because it still works great, but would be cool if someone knew how to do that and shared.