The Standard Horizon HX760S marine handheld is a 6-watt floating radio capable of interfacing with a Standard Horizon BH-2 Bluetooth® headset. All this capability is in a radio a tad under 6 inches tall and 2.5 inches wide. It weighs only 10.8 ounces.
The HX760S ships with an automatic AC fast charger. It needs eight hours to fully charge the 1150 mAH lithium ion battery pack used in this Standard Horizon handheld VHF. This charger shows a red light to indicate charging and green for a fully charged battery.
Standard Horizon HX760S
A DC charger cord and belt clip is also part of the package. The BH-2 Bluetooth® headset and its associated charger are also included.
Radio Controls
All functions of the HX760S are controlled with 11 front-mounted pushbuttons. Volume and squelch are adjusted by pressing their respective pushbuttons and then using the arrow keys to increase or decrease as needed. Wed like to see twist knobs for these two important functions. The push-to-talk switch is side-mounted while an optional microphone/speaker jack is located on top of the radio.
One button control is available for transmitter power selection, channel changing, weather channel selection, quick selection of channel 16 or 9, and certain scanning options.
There are four scan modes on this radio; they are dual watch, triple watch, memory, or priority. The HX750S can use all Canadian, International, and US marine VHF channels and NOAA weather channels.
Water Temperature Sensor
The HX760S has two special features not seen on other handheld VHF radios. First, is has a water temperature sensor built-in the radio front panel. To use it, youd soak the radio in the water to be measured for several minutes, then after a few key presses you’ll arrive at a page displaying the water temperature in Centigrade or Fahrenheit. We tried it and it worked as advertised showing the temperature on the top left of the screen.
Bluetooth®
The second, and more impressive feature, is the addition of Bluetooth® to this radio. After we charged the headset with the supplied AC charger we’d tried it out. We followed the procedure in the manual for coupling the headset and radio, and then made some voice calls to another VHF radio.
The headset activates when you start to speak, it’s not necessary to push any buttons. We could hear the other radio well and they could hear the headset transmission clearly too. According to Marine Division Product Manager, Scott Iverson, this radio also works well with a variety of Bluetooth® capable cell phone headsets. When you want to stop using the headset you have go into the HX760S menu and turn it off to regain full function on the radio.
Performance
Standard Horizon BH-2