I’ve been carrying the ICOM ID-50 for a couple of weeks now, including completing a SOTA activation with just this handheld: Longridge Fell, G/SP-014. So far, I’m very happy with this little handheld. I’ve seen a number of people online saying that the ID-50 is a waste of time, given that the ID-52 and ID-52 Plus exist. So, I wanted to weigh in with why I think the humble ID-50 is a great choice, and why this is my current every day carry radio. I’ll give me experiences running the ID-50 first, and then mention what extra features you get with the ID-52 Plus so you can see if you think it’s worth the extra money.
First of all, I really like the form factor of the ID-50. It’s very similar in size to my previous EDC radio, the AnyTone 878, although it’s a little thinner – so it fits easier in the pocket and I find it also sits nicer on my belt with the supplied belt clip. The ID-50 comes supplied with a BP-272 battery and detachable belt clip, but a fantastic feature of this handheld is that it uses the same batteries as my ICOM IC-705. The BP-272 is a 1880 mAh battery, but my IC-705 came with a BP-307 which is a 3150 mAh battery – and they’re interchangeable.
There were two concerns that I had about the ID-50 when I first bought it, the first was the screen visibility and the second was the speaker volume.
However, I activated Longridge Fell on a bright Autumn day and had absolutely no problems with screen readability. The monochrome screen was easy to read – and its brightness, contrast, and timeout can all be adjusted if you’re fussy.
As for the speaker volume, I actually ended up turning the radio down quite a lot since it was a calm day and a couple of the stations were coming in very loud. So far neither the speaker volume or monochrome screen have caused me any problems at all.
Aside from sharing batteries with my ICOM IC-705, there is another feature of the ID-50 that I really love: QSO recording. This is again something that the IC-705 does, so users of that radio will be familiar. However, it’s very simple. Whenever you make a contact on the radio, it records that contact to the SD card. This includes the audio, the time the contact was made, and the frequency it was made on. I’m sure some people will find this “entirely unnecessary” since you can just log to a notebook.
In fact, I log to a little Rite in the Rain notepad as you can see in the photo above, but I still really love this feature. It’s useful to check how the radio is picking your audio and it’s useful when you forget to write down an important detail, such as the frequency the contact was made on. I wrote about a situation recently on my activation of Shining Tor where I ended up changing frequency twice during an activation, and it would have been easy to forget to log the frequency change. You can call it unnecessary, but I love it nonetheless.
Speaking of selecting a frequency – the ID-50, unlikely many other handhelds, has a band scope option which can show you activity on the frequency range you’re on. That’s very useful both for selecting a frequency to move to, as well as spotting other stations you might want to make contact with.
Another interesting feature is the “Near Repeater” feature; you can load the handset with a list of repeaters and when you select Near Repeater on the handset, it’ll use the handset’s GPS signal to give you a list of repeaters in your local area. I can see this feature being useful for people who travel a lot and want the ability to preload everything before they go. Setting this feature up was a little painful, I ended up exporting all the 2m/70cm UK repeaters from RepeaterBook and writing a little python code to format the file in the way the radio wanted – but it’s the kind feature that you set up once and it just works; and adding a few new repeaters in the future as new repeaters become operational shouldn’t be much of a problem now.
I believe DStarInfo has a feature that will take your location and create an appropriate file for you, but I found it didn’t have that many UK FM repeaters in the dataset and included a lot of international repeaters that I’m not so interested in – so I took the approach mentioned above instead.
As a SOTA operator, another thing I really like about the ID-50 is that it’s waterproof and IPX7-rated. That means it’s not just splash proof, but it’s rated for submersion. A waterproof external microphone is also available. It’s not the only submersion rated handheld, the Yaesu FT5D is likely one that people will compare this radio to, but it’s still a great aspect of this radio.
Finally, the last thing that I want to call out as a great feature of this radio is the fact that it can charge from USB-C or 12v DC input (with a DC 5521 connector). Meaning that it’s a great choice for an EDC radio and gives good flexibility for charging in the field. It uses a standard USB-C cable for both charging and programming.
It’s obvious to say, that I think this is a great little handheld. However, what do you get for the extra money with the ID-52 or ID-52 Plus? Well the first thing to watch out for is that the older (non-Plus) version of the ID-52 does not have USB-C, instead it has a micro-USB port. However, the ID-52 Plus does have USB-C support similar to the ID-50.
The ID-52 Plus has a couple of other features that the ID-50 lacks: a colour screen and bluetooth. The whole radio is also slightly bigger, as is the (colour) screen and more memory channels (1000 instead of 500). However, the ID-50 is currently selling for around £340/$445 and the ID-52 Plus is more like £570/$745.
I absolutely love my ID-50, but if it’s just not for you and you’re looking for an alternative (other than the ID-52 Plus of course!) then check out the Yaesu FT5D.