Watch out, I'm feeling long-winded this morning!
I generally mean that between these two handheld, portable radios the Midland is much
more portable and flexible than the Randy.
The Randy is a functional rechargeable handheld, with AM and weather channels, plus scanning and a couple other nice-to-haves.
The Midland does these same core CB functions.
Where I believe the Midland is "more portable and versatile" is in how the base/battery pack of the Midland radio are swappable, and Midland provides (without extra charge) a "base" for the radio with nice coiled wire pigtail that ends in a 12v cig lighter plug and an SO239 connector for an antenna. Midland also includes two battery pack bases with purchase of that radio, one which holds 6 alkaline batteries and one which holds 8 rechargeable AA batteries. The 8-cell pack can be charged independently on its own.
I think these features give the Midland a huge advantage. If I took the time (as I will) to install a quality antenna on our Jeep Cherokee and carefully route the coax into the vehicle and bring it up say, into the glovebox or inside the center console, under a seat even, I can then easily set up the "car base" for the Midland to that antenna wire and tuck it away (glovebox looking like a good choice so far) and then whenever I want to use the radio in that car all I have to do is slide on that car base onto the bottom of the radio, and it instantly gets a quality connection to the antenna and power (assume I hard-wired the power, but the cig port would be fine too).
Now maybe we want to hop out of the car some hours later and go on a hike, bike ride, drop my boat in a lake, head up a ski hill, etc. I can just slide the car base off the bottom of my Midland and slap on either one of my battery packs, probably the rechargeable one, but I may also carry the alkaline battery pack as an emergency backup in case the rechargeable pack goes dead.
You can kinda do that with the Randy, but you have to deal with the
entire bulk of the radio and it will be
two separate wires to fiddle with, one of which will probably be a stiff piece of coax on the top and the other being a power wire (plugs into the side? bottom?) that may easily become unplugged. This is clearly more cumbersome to deal with in the car than the compact Midland with its clean quick-connect base.
I know for sure the Midland accepts a speaker mic accessory, details are a little less clear on the President but hopefully it has jacks?
I know the Midland comes out of the box with its three options, car power or AA alkaline or AA rechargeable, the Randy its unclear if the battery pack is swappable, it may be permanent, but even if its swappable its still not as versatile as being able to fall back on good old AA batteries that you can scrounge up anywhere anytime.
I agree, being able to leave your car and still be in communication is the whole idea. The Uniden wireless mic is very cool, and if we saw fit to put a Bearcat 980SSB in our car we could use the wireless mic to chat and get weather updates while at our campsites, this is true, but we may still leave our campsite and want to be connected. No problem right, just buy more radios? Well, I know I'm not the only one here who watches their pennies carefully. Our main travel car is generally my wife's car day to day and I don't spend any time in it other than when we are going on trips and adventures together. Am I to spend $100ish dollars on a quality antenna install for "her" car and then another $120-$160 for a nice Bearcat SSB in it and then yet another $80-$100 for the Uniden wireless mic, and then buy a handheld besides so I can be connected if I go hiking biking skiing kayaking or whatever far away from our car? And this is for 6-8 serious trips per year, at most..
The budget-minded person has to agree the Midland allows you to cover a LOT off bases with
just one radio purchase.
Sure, neither the Midland nor the Randy have SSB but that is not really the point of our type of mobile communications. We are usually adventuring in small groups of 4-8 with friends and family, these adventures can consist of camping hiking biking kayaking or paddle boarding, skiing, etc etc.
This past summer we went on multiple trips to areas with poor or non-existent cell coverage (the best type of areas, I would say). We camped and hiked and paddled the beautiful Devil's Lake area of Wisconsin with three other people. We don't always spend every moment with each other, sometimes going off to do our own thing for a bit, but without cell coverage there was no way to chat even though we were all less than a mile from each other. We could have
really used the weather ch functionality on a portable radio while we were all out paddling on the lake one day and got caught on the far side of the lake in a storm. The lake is walled with cliffs you can hike but without the cell coverage its pretty tough to get help if someone breaks an ankle, no doubt the ranger station at the bottom has a monitored radio though (they also put an emergency phone up at the top of the bluffs, hopefully you break that ankle near it if you didn't bring a radio
)
We also went on a trip this summer with a couple family members (who took their own car) to the upper peninsula of Michigan. Our cars met up on the highway about halfway there. Most of the UP has spotty cell coverage. Sometimes going through traffic our cars would get separated, not really by more than 1/4 mile or so but far enough to lose sight, when you get out of the populated area and back onto the rural part of a highway its nice to be able to check in and see if they are ahead of or behind you. We went out paddling and biking on our own a couple times from the house we rented, which had neither cell coverage nor internet, would have been nice to have portable radios for them to let us know breakfast was ready or "hey, some people just showed up here at the rental, there is some confusion about who has the house rented on which days" (type of thing that happened).
We also went skiing last spring with two other couples on a large hill with many different runs and chairlifts. Even if you start out together you can each take different forks in the trails and come out at drastically different places at the bottom. Then it's a game of "where is so-and-so? Are they already on the chair? Which chair? Are they waiting at the bottom or the top?" Some CBs in backpacks with the antenna poking out and a simple speaker mic are the way to go there, vs pulling off your gloves to try to use a cell phone (not sure there was really even any service there anyways).
So what I'm saying is there are TONS of short-range applications for "weak" handhelds without SSB. If I have a spare Midland 75-822 I can show another couple how to use it
once, and then that's their radio for the whole trip, car base with a temporary mag mount centerload for their car and battery bases for on the go. Its not that the Randy wouldn't work but it would be more cumbersome in the car. I guess if it supports a speaker mic that would help but they don't even make that clear.
Certainly not saying I wouldn't graciously accept a p. Randy if someone gave me one, but if I had to go buy a new portable radio tomorrow with my own money it looks to me like I get a lot more for less money from Midland ($100 vs $139).
It would be fun to see a side-by-side comparison but with the Midland it all depends on which base it attached...
