I feel your pain, I just went through the EXACT same decision making.
I got to play with a VX-6R before I purchased it, and it was nice.
I didn't get a chance to touch the Kenwood as it was not available at the store.
The price difference for me was more than $65, so that helped in the decision making.
Is dual receive really necessary for your first HT? I think yuo'll have enough going with one channel to worry about, let alone two. And, you may not have that many contacts being new, so it's not necessary to monitor two channels simultaneously. The 5 watts on 220 is def. nice, but for me was not biggest concern.
Double the memory, will you really use several hundred memory locations? Coming from scanners that have alpha tags and freqs listed together on the screen, I can't remember channels just by their freq.
ARTS is only nice feature if you're buddies are using it and don't mind sitting on the same freq. all the time. Seemed like a less used feature of all, and the other radio has to be Yaseu also.
I know this isn't easy, but try to find a place where you can touch both of these rigs and get a feel for them. Otherwise, if $65 won't kill ya, spring for the dual recieve and hear that much more traffic.
Again, this type of thing is very different to each user, ergonomics, audio, screen clearity.
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