Yaesu FT-991 review

I've had the FT-991 for 3 days now. It's a solid 5 in my book. Here's why. My budget was originally around $1000 for a "shack in a box" style radio. Just as the money became available to me, Yaesu removed most of the rebates, putting the price back up to almost $1500. Also, the power transistor issue made me have doubts.  Time for a rethink. So, I bought the Icom IC-7100. This was a mistake for me, for several reasons. D-Star is not prevalent in my area, and even with a high gain yagi I couldn't reliably hit the local D-Star repeater from 30 miles away. D-Star also requires registration, and is quite complex to setup when not used to it, and even more difficult to use when you can't get a reliable repeater connection. Further, when working HF I was hitting the same low power SSB output that others have complained of. As most of my time is spent on HF, this was unacceptable. I spoke to quite a few local hams who told me that this was a known issue, and that the FT-991 output transistor issues had been resolved now. So the radio was returned, and swapped for the FT-991, with an additional $250 added into the mix. Setup straight out of the box is easy. Almost, plug and play. The screen is clear and well colored. The touchscreen works. The Menus are clear an concise, and the manual actually tells you how to do things. The quick access menus allow you to put your favorite menu items close at hand to suit your preferences. The receiver is amazing in comparison to the FT-857D, and the TS-2000 that I used to have, and similar to the IC-7100. Audio quality for the money is amazing. Listening to 40m AM hams, the richness of sound is breathtaking. The mic seems to suit my voice, and I get good audio reports, and that's without playing with the audio processing module, or even turning it on. 15 types of noise reduction....filtering....I could go on. It puts our a solid 100W, just like it's supposed to. The autotuner is a typical minimal manuafacturer effort, but it tries to get a match.  My QTH antenna setup is not ideal. The IC-7100 struggled to get a signal out. Within 3 hours with the FT-991 at home I had multiple HF QSO's. At the local club site with an 80m loop and the FT-991 I've already worked Europe, Cuba, and French Guiana. I never had a single HF QSO with the IC-7100 at either the club site, or at home. C4FM, quite simply, works. There are lots of Fusion repeaters here, and no registration required. Simple to use, and reliable. One small complaint.... No USB cable, and no CAT/Data cable plugs, as per years gone by. For the $5 or $10 it would cost Yaesu to add them into the box it smacks of cost cutting. I haven't tried the digital modes (PSK31 et al) yet, but I'm told it's simple to setup. So, I'll report on that another time. Re-reading this review, it sounds like an Icom bashing session, and it isn't meant to be. Trust me, I could have been scathing about the apparent misinformation (being told that the new firmware fixes the low power output issue prior to purchase, and then denying it once I've actually bought the radio). Yes, Yaesu brought the FT-991 to market too soon. They too had issues. But, they 'owned them', and the issues are now resolved. Now, it's brilliant!! I just hope that Yaesu have learned their lesson in terms of real world product testing.