FTM-400DR is a flop - so disappointed

I own many FTM-350ARs and have not had any real complaint with them. When Yaesu discontinued it for the 400DR, I was looking forward to it to add into my car with its snazzy touch screen. I figured the $699 premium was going to be everything the FTM-350AR was plus digital, plus a touch screen, plus an SD card input. plus.. plus plus.. etc. Boy was I wrong.

I saw pictures of it last year, and it didn't make a showing at Dayton this year when I visited, which was very disappointing. I snagged the manual months ago when the FCC certification process kicked off so I could glimpse through it while waiting. It looked promising. Finally yesterday, they landed at HRO. I started to compare it to the 350AR. Sigh...

First off, they made some huge changes to the hardware I do not like. The Mic no longer can attach to the head unit. There is also no speaker, mic or ptt on the head unit like the 350AR. This reduces the cable from an RJ45 to an RJ11. I do not like this change. The only positive is the head unit is about half the weight.

The FTM-400DR is missing the LineIn connector. Uh oh... I didn't like where this was going.

They did not supply the typical audio L/R splitter like they did
with the FTM-350AR & FTM-10R radios. This scared me into thinking they had no plan for it. Sure enough, the menu item that was listed in the FCC manual under [TX/RX -> Audio, choice #1] "Mix / Separate" was missing in the radio and release manual. This is horrible. I like splitting the audio out for VFO separation.


The touch screen is resistive, which isn't surprising. It's accuracy is pretty low. It's easy to mistype when trying to type in APRS messages.

There is no FM Broadcast receiver. Really? Every Yaesu radio has had one.. even the $130 VX-3R..

And the big one.. XBand repeater was REMOVED. FCC manual menu [CONFIG Item 19] XBand Repeater listed it. I check the release manual, it's missing. Radio has no option. Stops at 18. WTF!?!

Wires is back called "Wires-X" and is easily activated by holding the mode button a bit too long, again pissing everyone off on every repeater.

And now lets talk about the Digital part. A friend bought one too so we were able to compare it to DStar. In "DN" (Digi Normal) mode, 6.25Khz is used for voice, 6.25Khz is used for GPS data and call sign information. The audio sounds so similar to my DStar ID-51a, but a bit clearer. I'd say MotoTRBO quality. Simplex tests showed that it was quite good at low signal reception. The radio in "Auto" mode would try digital as long as it could, then gracefully switch over to analog FM when it ultimately could not get signal. Every time someone would PTT, their callsign appears and distance in miles (or km) on the screen. If you had the Navi Screen, it would show their relative location to you, but I couldn't save the location or even chose to navigate to them. I may not fully know how to do that yet, and that may be an issue on my part.

Digital modes only works on VFO A.  

The mode setting is GLOBAL and not per memory channel. This means its SUPER easy to accidentally blast the local repeater with C4FM Digital if you didn't check before you key.  

You can change the digital mode to "VW" (Voice Wide). This allocates all 12.5Khz to voice. Only the call sign is sent, and no GPS data.. The audio quality is VERY good in this setting. I wish we could get this audio out of 6.25khz channels. Codec2 perhaps?  

The FCC manual showed options for not sending GPS data out with your voice while transmitting. This option has been removed from the release manual and radio. If you use digital, you send your location, unless you disable GPS entirely or override it with a static location.

The "Group Monitor" feature is the "GM" button on the radio face. It is like a digital "hive mind" mode that has all the radios in your area automatically exchange location data while using the same channel for voice. You see your radio chirp out data automatically every now and then and you can request a sync for all stations on demand. This seems neat, but again, if you fat finger it by accident on a local repeater, you then begin blasting it with modem chirps every 5 seconds until you realize what you did.

The SD card only saves config settings for backup and a GPS crumb trail. There is no way to use it to program the radio from your PC and then import it into the radio.

APRS makes a clicking noise out of the speaker every received packet even if volume is fully down on VFO B. You have to enable APRS mute to get rid of the click. There is no APRS user guide in the box. The main manual keeps referring you to downloading the APRS users guide online, yet Yaesu's website only lists the sales brochure. Really?

Until (unless) Yaesu can address these issues via Firmware, I am not keeping this radio. This is a significant step down from the FTM-350AR. I'll call them on Monday and give them a chance to explain themselves, but I fully expect that no one at USA Yaesu to have any answers or even to have played with the radio yet.

Another chronic problem that existed on the FTM-350AR which I was hoping for a solution on this radio is Banks. Neither radio has any bank systems, and has 500 memories for each side of the radio separate from each other. This means scanning on this radio is completely impossible. You can only mark channels as "Skip" and scan all, or set it to only scan memories marked included. There are no banks or Hypermemories like the VX-8 or FT-88/8900 etc radios. 

I'm very disappointed....