Radio Review: Kirisun S780 Digital HT

I was able to get my hands one on of these radios and test it for a short time.  The radio has a very solid build, and a large color screen.  From first glance it almost looks like a cell phone with an antenna on top of it.  I keyed a couple of repeaters with it and got some good reports from other operators.

What I learned about the radio, which I didn’t know before my tests:

The standard this radio is using is the same as dPMR / DMR Tier 1, FDMA. It will NOT talk with DMR Tier 2 radios (TDMA, 2 time slots).  So no DMR 🙁  This is disappointing since Kirisun is on the DMR’s Associations preferred manufacturer’s list, which lists those companies who have build radios that adhere to the globally recognized DMR standard.  Here is a list of those companies.

For a monoband HT radio, that isn’t capable of DMR transmission, this radio isn’t anything special, really.  If you have a need for a Tier 1 DMR radio, it would probably be great.  But since it isn’t compatible with the NA DMR Standard, you can probably do better with other radios.