Home > Consumer Reviews > Cobra 148 GTL 40-Channel Classic CB Radio

Cobra 148 GTL 27Mhz sideband Radio. I'm very disappointed with this radio. I love my radios and have a lot of them, but this new Cobra's is nothing like the old Cobra's. The new cobra is made in China the one I have really drifts a lot. It is very sensitive to temperature. I have PC122's and they drift a lot but this cobra is ridicules. I purchased it from JUBEES Enterprises and it was faulty on arrival. On arrival it had a microphone fault, muffled audio as well as weak signal and poor transmission. It was 3W on AM and about 9W on SSB upper & lower and it was out of tune. This is really dissapointing.
The microphone gain is poor and the clarifier is very sensitive and twitchy. I sent the unit for repair locally and it has cost me aprox $100 all up freight included to get the brand new unit repaired and retuned back to me. Cobra warranty in Australia is useless.
You are on your own. JUBEES Enterprises did not want anything to do with me once I reported the unit faulty on arrival. There are better radios out there.
Purchase something else. Cobra is not what it used to be.
Very disappointed.

Years ago I had two similar radios - also made by COBRA. They performed flawlessly for the 7 years I owned them. I used one in my car and the other at home as a base station. So far this radio performs as well, if not better, than the others. We're using this one in our RV as a back up to our cell phones. I'll do a follow-up down the road when we've had a little more talk time.

Cobra 148GTL 40 Channel CB Radio
...Great product,even exceeds F.C.C regs.! Even better price. Note: In the
future when virtually ALL communication is lost, The C.B. radio will be Your only hope.

Had the radio for a few weeks before I had a chance to make some SSB contacts and all reported distorted audio. The receive audio sounded good, just the transmit audio has the problem. AM mode works great, with excellent reports. The swr on the antenna was 1.2:1 so there was no problem with the antenna. Since the AM sounded excellent I would not think the problem was with the mic. The internal speaker had some rattle to it so I hooked up an external speaker. The ANL and NB were excellent in my mobile setup. I did a google search and found another report of the same problem.

First unit shipped to me received fine but the transmit audio was terrible. Even with the Dynamike turned up all the way people could barely hear me. Had to literally shout to be heard at all.
To Amazon's credit they sent me a replacement unit 2nd day air. Amazon has been great to deal with, as always.
This second radio seems to transmit fine so far. However, the speaker of this radio emits a constant, low volume, high pitched whine when receiving. The first radio did not have this "feature".
The good news is all of the controls and features seem to work correctly and the noise blanker and automatic noise limiter do a terrific job stopping car ignition noises. I figure I will keep this radio and live with the whine and hope no other problems crop up. If they do I will change my rating.