the handhelds are big heavy crappy bricks by today's standards, thats what I used to use before China radios hit the scene.. if you need a radio you can beat someone to death with, sure.. but they really dont offer much more.. I use a couple of the Kenwood Mobiles for my repeater but that was just availability to build such a thing outta, they are okay.
All good points. I have some of the China radios as well, MD2017 for DMR and several BF-888 for GMRS loaners. The MD2017 is a decent radio, but is too complex to lend to a friend, and the BF-888s have poor audio and I have had 2 die (1 from trauma, the other cause of death is unknown) over the past few years. I would certainly never carry any of these backpacking, but was thinking a solid Motorola brick with only a volume knob and channel selector knob and good audio would be a decent loaner radio when convoying and would survive kicking around the footwell for a couple of years.
Seems like the issue with Motorola is programming, but Kenwoods can be programmed without expensive software, no? There is also some satisfaction in using a nice well built radio over something that feels like a walmart toy.