2024 Uniden MHS157UV dual-band UHF/VHF radio review

The rules around the safety gear that boaters need to carry when they hit the water are changing as technology slowly replaces more traditional resources.

One of those is the incandescent flare. It has been a key part of the marine environment for more than 160 years, but questions over their safety – they burn extremely hot – and environmental impact from the chemicals they contain and the lack of clear methods to dispose of them have made them messy to carry, let alone use.

In some jurisdictions, marine safety authorities are now allowing boaters to replace flares with a marine radio in some instances – a great move for particularly small boat wonders who spend most of their time on the water either inland or in enclosed coastal regions.

One manufacturer who has jumped on the change is Japanese wireless communications specialist Uniden. While handheld marine radios are nothing new, they have evolved to be far more practical and useful than their forebears.

Among its range is the Uniden MHS157UV, a radio that can switch between land-based UHF frequencies and marine-based VHF frequencies at the push of a button.

The Uniden MHS157UV is priced from around $266 from brick-and-mortar retail stores such as BCF or online retailers including Kogan.

Along with the handheld unit, the Uniden MHS157UV comes with an AAA-sized battery tray that can replace the unit’s lithium-ion battery if needed, a belt clip, the choice of 240-volt or 12-volt recharging via a desktop cradle charger, and a couple of stainless steel screws for hard-mounting the desktop charger.

The belt clip has a loop for a lanyard, but none is provided or even available as an option.

The unit comes with a built-in speaker and microphone, but you can also add an external handheld speaker and microphone that screws in next to the antenna, although it may compromise the waterproof status of the radio.

The Uniden unit is at the cheaper end of the scale, so doesn’t include a feature called digital select calling, or DSC. DSC is a button on the radio that, when held down with a single press, instantly sends an automated distress call to every other DSC-equipped boat in listening range.

However, this power-hungry function relies on the radio receiving a GPS signal that sends out your location with the alert, compromising battery life.

Of note, if you’re using the four AAA batteries, the unit’s transmission power is limited to the two lowest settings, shrinking the range that you can broadcast to.

The Uniden MHS157UV is a fairly conventional-looking handheld radio, coloured yellow to aid with visibility.

The front of the unit is quite clean, with only eight soft-touch buttons including an up-down toggle on the fascia below a large orange back-lit LCD screen.

On top, the unit features a screw-in antenna that is a little longer and thicker than a conventional VHF radio.

On the left side of the unit is the push-to-talk transmission button, which has a separate red button immediately below it that steps the unit’s power up to the full 5.0 watts to give it more range. To save power or to talk to a mate on a boat nearby, you can dial down the transmission power to 0.5W, 1.5W or 2.5W. On a full recharge, Uniden claims the unit will give at least 12 hours of service life if you use the battery-saving feature that switches off receiving power at regular intervals.

On the top left of the buttons on the front is one that quickly allows you to switch between channel 16, used for hailing other boats or making emergency calls, and channel 67, used in Australia to broadcast regular weather and navigation updates.

A long press of the button allows you to set up a tri-channel watch so the unit will continually scan, say, channels 16, 67 and whatever was the last channel that you used, such as ship-to-ship channel 72. The power button also acts as a one-touch button to switch the radio directly to channel 67.

An INST button allows the user to set two channels that can be swapped at the push of the button.

There is also a channel scan and memory button, another that adjusts volume or locks the settings, and another for switching between the default transmission power.

The unit is rated at an IPX7 level of waterproofing, meaning it can submerge in less than a metre of water for up to 30 minutes, but it will float, extending its life in the water. By comparison, a modern iPhone, which we note from experience sinks like a stone, has an IPX68 rating meaning it can submerge in up to 2.0 metres of water for 30 minutes without leaking.

A neat feature of this radio is the ability to broadcast using UHF frequencies, allowing you to communicate with land-based radios commonly fitted to cars. A long press of the button with “BAND” on it will switch between UHF and VHF.

Handheld VHF radios are not new to the marine world, but unless you need to talk with other boats on the water they’ve not been a necessary safety item, particularly if your boat happens to be a dinghy.

We tested the Uniden MHS157UV on Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay, communicating with another handheld unit on a second boat that at times was up to 500 metres away.

Boat cockpits are notoriously noisy at speed, meaning a handheld radio that broadcasts a clear voice is important. The clarity of the Uniden unit’s speaker is excellent, with good clarity even when the other user was speaking directly into the microphone, slightly distorting the broadcast, rather than across it.

The unit is slightly awkward to use left-handed as the push-to-talk button is located almost at the top of the unit, meaning you’re holding an at-times slippery radio right at the top to use it – a rubber grip surface would help. It’s easier and more comfortable to grip it right-handed and use your index finger rather than your thumb to hit the transmission switch.

The shape of the Uniden MHS157UV means it easily fits into a cupholder.

Something we noted in a separate test on a freshwater lake was when we dropped it in the water to float. The lower speaker grille will fill with water, rendering the speaker almost useless. Some other handheld radios will automatically give the speaker a long buzz to shake the water out of it, however, you will need to physically shake the Uniden to clear it.

The backlit screen is bright and clear, with a large channel number and battery level indicator.

All other functions and settings are flagged on the screen via small icons that, if the screen is beaded with water, can be difficult to read.

The reason behind including an 80-channel UHF radio isn’t really clear until you use the handset. Surprisingly, it came in handy while loading the dinghy onto its trailer at a busy boat ramp, allowing us to talk to the driver of the vehicle queued up to drop the trailer in the water. It will also have obvious benefits on inland waterways where using a VHF radio to call for help could fall on deaf ears, but a call to drivers on a nearby road will get a response.

It also helped me on the road back from our road test. Traffic along a section of the freeway ground to a sudden halt. Flicking on the Uniden and switching it across to UHF allowed the unit to listen in as truck drivers discussed the fastest way around a car crash ahead.

It’s good to see marine safety authorities allowing technology to start to displace some of the older safety gear on boats. Swapping out flares for a marine radio is just one of the initiatives that will have a positive effect on boaters.

And it is units like the Uniden MHS157UV that are paving the way for this to happen. Highly portable, meaning it can go from a kayak to a tinnie to a trailerable boat, which means you can have one radio that serves a multitude of purposes.

The Uniden MHS157UV includes some clever electronic features that make it more user-friendly but misses a few scores on the physical side, including a more portable recharging option that doesn’t need the cradle.

Adding a UHF radio function to the handset may seem odd, but it extends the unit’s usefulness to onshore applications and not just the water.