I have been looking around think what two ham radios would make excellent Christmas Presents this year. Well my two favorite picks for Ham Radios are the Yaesu FT-450D Base Transceiver and the Yaesu FT-857D HF Transceiver. Both of these radios are HF or High Frequency Transceivers. They both do an excellent job and are rated very well at Amazon. They are not the cheapest of Ham Radio Transceivers and they are also not the most expensive.
I love the fact that they have some unbelievable features and are not big in size. They could easily be used in a mobile type environment. I would however have to say that the Yaesu FT-450D is much more suited for mobile use mainly due to it's size. Just at amazon it has 4 out of 5 stars and 24 reviews presently at 79%, which is not bad at all. The 450D has a solid 5 star rating and with 15 customer reviews. So you can see they are doing pretty good. I would also check out eham.net at http://www.eham.net/reviews/products/14 and read what Ham Radio Operators are saying about these transceivers as well as many other Ham Radio Transceivers.