Walkie Talkies VS Two-way Radios

Do you ever have such an experience that when you search walkie talkies, two ways radios will show up? Or the other way round. You may wonder whether they are the same thing or have any connections between them. Today, let’s find it out together.

What is Walkie Talkie?

A walkie-talkie, more formally known as a handheld transceiver (HT), is a hand-held, portable, two-way radio transceiver.

Typical walkie-talkies resemble a telephone handset, with a speaker built into one end and a microphone in the other (in some devices the speaker also is used as the microphone) and an antenna mounted on the top of the unit. They are held up to the face to talk.

A walkie-talkie is a half-duplex communication device. Multiple walkie-talkies use a single radio channel, and only one radio on the channel can transmit at a time, although any number can listen. The transceiver is normally in receive mode; when the user wants to talk they must press a “push-to-talk” (PTT) button that turns off the receiver and turns on the transmitter. Smaller versions of this device are also very popular among young children.

Some units have additional features such as sending calls, call reception with a vibration alarm, keypad locking, and a stopwatch.

What is two-way radio?

A two-way radio is a radio that can both transmit and receive radio waves (a transceiver), unlike a broadcast receiver which only receives content. It is an audio (sound) transceiver, a transmitter and receiver in one unit, used for bidirectional person-to-person voice communication with other users with similar radios.

Two-way radios are available in stationary (base station), mobile (installed in vehicles), and hand-held portable models. Hand-held two-way radios are often called walkie-talkies, handie-talkies or hand-helds.

Two-way radios are used by groups of geographically separated people who need to keep in continuous voice communication, such as aircraft pilots and air traffic controllers, ship captains and harbormasters, emergency services personnel like firemen, policemen, and ambulance paramedics, taxi and delivery services, soldiers and military units, fast food and warehouse employees, and radio amateurs.

What’s the diffenrence?

Now that we’ve made it clear what is a walkie talkie and what is a two-way radio, let’s see if they are interchangeable. Well, the answer is yes and no.

Looking at the definitions above, we can deduce that all walkie talkies are two-way radios but not all two-way radios are walkie talkies. The way they are made available to the folks mark the difference between them.

Walkie talkies can be considered as being an inferior product targeted at the lower end of the market sometimes remaining high-end too. Hearing about walkie talkies people usually picture a basic radio or toy gadget like kids walkie talkies in their mind. They are mainly used by non-commercial organizations and are sold in street shops with bright colours to focus their target audiences. They have a shorter range, fewer features, are license-free and cheaper than two-way radios.

A two-way radio on other hand is defined by professional users as a high-end, feature-rich radio which is largely used by commercial businesses with large sites like schools, 5-star hotels, hospitals, security firms, event management firms, and others. This type of radio generally has a tougher build quality and is more likely to have an IP rating which makes it ideal for environments such as building sites. Therefore the main difference between both lies in the fact that how they are marketed and presented.

Conclusion

Above all, the difference between the walkie talkies and two-way radio is very minor and it mostly depends on the terminology that buyer and seller use for the device. Not all the time the big firms address it as two-way radio and hence justifying the statement walkie-talkies and two-way radios terms are often used interchangeably.

Do you have a clear understanding of walkie talkies and two-way radios now? If you have any other questions or ideas about our products, please feel free to contact us!