My advice to new hams who aren't super sure what part of the hobby they are into is a quansheng uv-k6. About $35 on amazon and something to play with with the custom firmware and wideband multimode receive. It won't talk all over the world, but it will give you an idea if playing with radios is fun for you for cheap.

If you see baofeng 5r recommendations, this is basically the same recommendation from 2024. The baofeng are a little out of date now that the quansheng is out. Safe to assume most of them would not pick the baofeng today.