We were given $50 to spend and asked to check out an item from the Electronics Department at our local Walmart… Well, we didn’t want to do the typical MP3 player, tablet, or techie type electronic item… We wanted to do something just a little different. I gave my hubby the choice, and he thought that the Cobra Family Service Radio/Weather Alert Radio would be a perfect choice with hunting season coming up. While at the store we did a little bit of quick research and chose the Cobra CXT595 to try out. As the primary outdoorsman of the family, I gave him the chance to put them to the test. Check out his review below!
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We recently took the opportunity to test the new Cobra CXT595 Walkie Talkies we purchased at Walmart. We’re a fairly active family that spends plenty of time outdoors participating in a wide range of activities like hunting, fishing, training dogs, hiking, and running. Sometimes the places we go don’t have the best cell phone reception; often times there is no reception and that makes it hard when we want to communicate.
Looking at the Cobra CXT595 Walkie Talkies, they seem to have many of the important features you would want in a radio. The advertised range on the package is 32 miles in the mountains, 14 miles in the woods and 3 miles in the city respectively. Some of the other great features to note are the rechargeable batteries, micro-usb charging, vibration alert, waterproof, weather alerts and an LED flashlight.
The package includes the two radios, a charging dock and micro-usb cable. It’s great to have the same standard for charging cell phones too. Like us, most households have a few micro-usb cables and chargers available already. The dock is minimal and doesn’t take up a lot of space where it’s left.
Put to the Test
We performed two separate tests with the CXT595 radios. In the first test, one of my daughters took one radio and went into the far corner of our back yard and I walked down to the stop sign about four houses away. We used the call button to alert each other a few times and spoke for a while while moving around behind houses and trees. The test worked well and we did not notice any issues at that time.
In the second test, my wife took one of the radios on her trip to Walmart, which is about 9 miles from our house. We used cell phones to coordinate the testing and tell each other when were were transmitting. We live in a semi-rural part of the county where there’s a lot of trees around. Our range test was disappointing as were were not able to communicate much further than about 4000ft.
I tested the LED flashlight and it’s similar to a smartphone flashlight. It’s not going to light up the woods anytime soon.
Overall, the radios seem light weight, appropriately sized and easy to use. Time will tell if we can find a greater range