Before I had my technician’s license I bought a Baofeng UV-5R on Amazon Prime Day for like $25 and learned what a repeater was and how to program it into the radio.
Then when I passed my Technician’s exam I upgraded to a Yaesu FT-2DR which also did digital.
A few months ago I bought 4 new Baofengs on Amazon for cheap backups and got all of them programmed the same.
Thanks to the both of your for radio suggestions