@artisan-radio Well be sure to look around on Temu or Aliexpress as different sellers sell at different prices. But Im sure you know thst.
I actually ended up purchasing a Quansheng UV-K1 handheld transceiver. Same price as the ATS receiver only. Apparently, there is new custom firmware for the radio that supports RDS with FM broadcast reception, as well as a ton of other features, including, of course, transmitting.
The UV-K1 is an upgrade to the UV-K5, with more memory for firmware. That means that it can support a lot more features than the custom firmware for the original K5's (of which I have several). The K1 is smaller and thus more portable, but the tradeoff is a smaller battery. Since I plan on using it primarily for reception, that shouldn't be an issue.
I'm not about the retire my K5's yet. There is different custom firmware for them that supports Double Sideband transmission. It's accomplished by hacking in the firmware the FM modulator. The big advantage of that is that any radio that supports SSB reception will be able to hear your transmission (twice in fact, once for each sideband). The tradeoff is you won't get the added range benefits of SSB, as the bandwidth is the same as FM, and not as narrow as using only one sideband.
Still, it's worth it for me, particularly on the 2 meter band. Even though the K5 (and the K1, for that matter) will transmit on all ham bands down to 18 Mhz, you really don't want to do that, as the harmonics are pretty bad (there are no bandpass filters for anything other than 2 meters and 70cm). There's just no getting around the laws of physics.