I have owned the Kenwood D-700 and the D-7 radios since they came out. I can't say enough about the radios, they performed excellent. My D-700 is a tough performer, always ready to answer the call and do all sorts of neat, jazzy stuff. We use several of them in our Search and Rescue organization.
However, if you have never owned either the Yaesu or the Kenwood (it's not quite clear if you have had an aprs capable rig before), see if you can't play with each before you drop the cash. I would like to bring up the point, having owned the Kenwoods now for many, many, many years and many, many hours/miles of performance, I would leap all over the Yaesu in a heartbeat. To me, it does everything the Kenwood does, just more refined (keep in mind I have only read reviews and seen stuff on you tube...).
I do like Yaesu mobile rigs better then Kenwood (having several Yaesu mobiles scattered around) as they are easier to play with and program. The Kenwood's menus seem backwards to me (Japanese read right to left and this comes out with how the menus are worked/driven. Just my thoughts, I got over it right quick).
I also like that fact that Yaesu has contained everything into it's own unit. No external gps needed. Less wiring, interfacing, crap to go wrong etc. I never had too many problems with my Kenwood D-700/Garmin GPS, but I feel that if the transceiver had it's own gps, less crap to wire! I can use my external gps for mapping, laptop gps interface and if I really want, laptop aprs! (Yes, I can see the flawed logic in my argument about running wires and such, with all that other stuff floating around in the cab etc.:Wow1
Last point on my soapbox tonight: I will not buy Yaesu's new rig until generation two! Let the true techo-geeks (pot calling kettle black) figure out the foibles, software errors, how to program and mod.... then I will buy one!
Cheers...
