Quansheng UV K5 - Best Place To Buy?

If you don't want to read, the best place to buy from in my opinion is Aliexpress. It's the cheapest place without a doubt, and anywhere else you may be considering buying from [eBay, Amazon etc] has almost definitely sourced their stock from either Aliexpress or Alibaba anyway. It's all coming from the same place. So you are getting the exact same product from Aliexpress that you would buy from eBay, Amazon, Gumtree, Facebook Marketplace etc, only paying far less money.

One of my Quanshengs all brand new in the box

The only downfall is you are having something delivered from Asia / China rather than your own country, which can put some people off. But I have ordered a fair few UV K5's now from Aliexpress, as well as other items like antennas, aerials, leads, multi-meters, SMA / BNC adapters etc, and have had no problems what so ever. They all arrived within 5 - 7 days to the UK.

For first time buyers

On Aliexpress there is a "welcome deal". This gives first time buyers / users of the site the opportunity to get a large discount on the first item they buy. If you buy more than one item on your first order, only one item is eligible for the welcome deal discount. You can choose which item you want to select for the welcome deal discount. I just choose the most expensive item, which was the Quansheng radio. Works out really cheap.

And I've also got to give a shout out to EVRI. I think Evri deal with the shipping from abroad for Aliexpress once it lands in the UK, and it has been excellent. Their tracking system is absolutely spot on. Keeps the buyer informed every step of the way, as does Aliexpress' tracking also. If you want to read a review on the K5 / K6 before making your decision on whether to grab one or not - take a look here: https://lcrmadx.blogspot.com/2023/11/quansheng-uv-k6-review.html

Here is the post that I said - if you don't want to read

Well, I've bought quite a few Quansheng UV K5's over the last 6 - 12 months. So I thought I'd write a quick and to-the-point post about where the best place is to buy one from. I'll let you into a little secret. When I tried to buy my first UV K5, I did so on eBay. I found it, paid for it, but then came across the Aliexpress website.

The price I paid from the eBay seller compared to the price they were selling for on Aliexpress was quite a difference. Once I seen those prices on Aliexpress, I did a quick bit of research online [Reddit and few other sites] to see if Aliexpress was safe and legit. Turns out it was for the most part. But many people said to only buy from sellers with over 95% positive feedback. I have largely stuck to that and had no issues at all. And to be honest, I have bought from a few sellers with lower feedback scores than 95% and still had no problems. But its a good rule of thumb to stick with.

Upgraded Quansheng enters the matrix

Needless to say, I was not happy paying £30 GBP on eBay for a K5 when they were being sold on Aliexpress for much much less, so I made up an excuse and asked the seller for a refund because I had bought the radio in error. He gave me a refund no problem, but I did feel a bit bad about doing that. Anyway, I couldn't turn down a bargain like that, so I left him positive feedback and moved on.

A few Quanshengs later and I'm planning on getting the newest model next, the UV K5 (99). It's supposed to be really good. Out the box It has a much wider frequency range than the older models [20MHz - 1000MHz]. With such a wide range it makes me feel like it might not be worth modding it with egzumer. 

But, I have read that without the mod, there is a design / software fault with the stock software. And its something like this. When the torch light is activated the radio can freeze and needs to be turn off and on again to be usable. So perhaps installing egzumer would get rid of this issue. I'd have to test it. I'd probably never use the torch anyway, so may just leave it with the standard stock software.