For all those who know about Baofeng and Chirp and compatibility it can be a trick to figure out. I have programmed a UV-5R with it. But my question is can a UV-82 be programmed off of it? My 5 buck cable can not read the UV-82 but works fine on the UV-5R I have read that a 20 dollar cable works better than the one I have. But just wanted to make sure it would work before dropping 20 bucks.
You get what you pay for. The Baofeng radios seem picky on their cable, model specific. If you know the $20 works then buy it, those cheaper cables are hit and miss and save yourself time and money just buy the $20 if you know it will work.
Here is a good example. I lost the USB programming cable for my Wouxun KG-UPD1P and turned to e-bay for a new one. First one was DOA, sent it back for a refund. Found a second one but the driver disk did not have any drivers but it did have Baofeng programming software to program the Wouxun which I only program it with Chirp or the official Wouxon software. Found drivers online for the USB cable but these were not correct and even got the BSOD in Win8.1. While exploring the driver disk, there was a Motorola folder containing some older RSS for like the GP300, etc. The radios and RSS are long done but the RSS is still copyrighted by Motorola and should not have been on that disk. I was so ticked off that the seller refunded me without sending the cable back.
Radio City, a real live amateur radio store (known by fellow hams as "the candy store") located in a NE suburb of the metro are is a dealer for Wouxun radios and had the official programming cable for just a few more dollars then the ones on e-bay. With all of that buying and returning and time lost, saving a whole $5.00 was useless. I wish I knew this before trying to save a few lousy bucks buying on he web. The locally purchased cable works like a charm.