The group I co-lead, "One Lap Around New England," is an annual youth bicycling tour through the six New England states. We now own five TalkAbouts, and just purchased 2 of the 250's this fall for evaluation. I  find that this model is an incremental enhancement from the TalkAbout +.  The range seems a little better (though the cases are identical); Motorola  yanked the absolutely useless voice synthesizer out of the Plus and  replaced it with a useful scanning and lock function. Another reader whined  about "not being able to scan subcodes" -- apparently thinking  codes are channels. They are just used for squelching other conversations  -- pushing the monitor button lets you hear everything on the channel. We  chose these over Cobra's FRS products because they stand up to the abuse  and needs of cyclists (especially CHANGING BATTERIES!). A great inexpensive  solution that has saved our necks several times.