I like them myself. I've used mine in places like Wal-Mart when the family goes shopping. Your correct, the range of those little walkie-talkies are about a mile. I've had no complaints thus far and have been using it for about 2 years now.
The bad thing about them is the coverage range on both transmit and receive, but most everyone has a cell phone these days. Overall, I'd say they are useful in most situations, especially with kids.
I got a Costco special last August, 2 Motorola 5000s and 2 4500s in one package, for about $40 (cheap, as far as I know). The 5000s have a 5 mi. advertised range; the 4500s have a 2 mi. advertised range. The 5000 channels have subchannels, which must all be set to 0 to talk with the 4500s.
I happened to get a chance to use them when I brought them up to Tahoe for skiing recently. I found that they generally did not work well through buildings such as hotels, and did not seem to work at all (or almost always so) through forests, when otherwise in range. I also found that subchannel 0 is somewhat crowded for normal use, since I would get other peoples' transmissions more often than those of my family at Tahoe.
So go with Motorola 5000s or better (documentation I had mentioned 5500s, etc., presumeably more advanced than the 5000s), and carry cell phones for line of sight problems.
Also forget using anything when you are deep inside buildings, caves, tunnels, etc.
I do not know about other brands but I could not imagine them being much better than Motorola (and possibly worse).
they're good on camping trips.
Don't bother with the el cheapos, they are fragile. Cobra makes some good ones. I've settled on a pair of Cobras with built in compasses that were midway in price but holding up after many trips. Grandson and I each carry one, and a GPS, only way to keep up with a 12 year old. The combo radio/GPS units seem to be holding up to use from what I hear.
I can get 5 or 6 miles range on the beach, half that in the woods, most of the time.