P1225 reliability/durability ?

MT2000 man · Post by **MT2000 man** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 6:53 pm

Good day all its been awhile since my last post here but I just acquired a UHF P1225 with a keypad and display. I?ve owned just about every M radio in the past except this one. How do you guys like the P1225? Is it a good durable radio that will last a good amount of time of usage/etc. ? I currently have an astro saber I R so I know it won?t be as reliable as that but I needed a smaller radio that?s more vestal and portable so I went with the P1225. I?ve also owned the GP300 and that was a great radio. So what do you all think about the P1225 ??? Any problems that I should eventually keep my eyes open for ?
Thanks
Mike

jim · Post by **jim** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 7:49 pm

One of my police customers has around 20 of them since they came out. Only batteries have ever failed....and they are a rough ghetto town.

Mikey · Post by **Mikey** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 8:01 pm

Our police dept bought new P1225's and after about 6 month's threw them all in a box and went back with there Gp350's. They had nothing but problems with them. One of the most problems is the batteries would lose contact when they were jarred or bumped and that would click the unit off scan. Even with Motorola's "new designed" batteries they still lost contact. I would go for the HT1250, its a lot better radio and a whole lot more rugged than the 1225.

Mikey

Post by **escomm** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 11:14 pm

I'm surprised users experienced problems with the P1225. Then again I'm surprised they are being used in public safety as well

kf4sqb · Post by **kf4sqb** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 11:56 am

I've been carrying one for several years now. I've never really experianced any trouble with mine, and I use it for volunteer fire and used to use it for railroad. The only real issues I know of to look out for is a few bad solder joints on the board. Namely, the antenna port joints, and the speaker/mic joints. Considering that it's a fairly low-tier product, and not intended for public safety use, I'm satisfied with mine.

Post by **wavetar** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 6:16 am

Like all models, they have their common problems.

The first couple of years they used a conductive carbon/rubber "zebra strip" for the microphone connection. It just sat between the mic element & the board, and of course after a little time out in the field, the failure rate was enormous. We used a small rubber spacer underneath the mic element to push it further onto the strip, and this fixed 95% of our problems, but hard-wiring it was the only way to get 100% reliability, which Motorola realized & switched to.

Like the GP300, the two-prong accessory jack is prone to failure, although it was much better with the P1225 since the jack was located on the side of the radio, and not the top where every piece of dirt & water could easily flow into.

Poor solder on the reference oscillator is a very common problem. The radio usually appears to be completely dead when the connection(s) go bad, although display models usually have all the segments lit-up on the far left character.

Water resistance is not very high...not even as good as the GP300, which wasn't all that great (especially on the bottom of the radio).

If the 'common' problems are dealt with, and the radio isn't exposed to an overly abusive environment (ie: fire fighting), then it's a decent middle-tier radio. I would prefer a PR400 or HT1250 over it.

Todd