Chainway C5: the handheld with the longest outlook

What the C5 is and who it is for

Chainway is a Chinese maker of mobile computers and RFID devices that sells into Europe through distributors. The devices are technically level with the well-known Western brands but cost markedly less. The price for that is thinner documentation. Open a spec sheet at an established brand and you find a complete list of standards, an accessory matrix and a support roadmap. At Chainway you find a table of features. That is no reason to avoid the devices; it is a reason to be more precise in your request for quotation.

Inside the Chainway range the C5 is the current handheld generation with a large display. It sits between the somewhat older Chainway C72, the classic workhorse with a 5.2-inch display, and the Chainway R6, a sled reader for a phone you already own. For a fashion shop that takes a full stocktake once a year and recounts single product groups twice a week in between, the C5 is the device that lasts the next five years without your having to repeat the decision after two.

The most important procurement note: two device generations in circulation

Two Chainway device generations are on the market at the same time. The older build works with an Impinj Indy R2000, the current one with the Impinj E Series. The difference is not cosmetic: around 15 metres of range against 26 to 31, and 900 tags per second against 1,300.

Figures from the Chainway product pages, retrieved 31.08.2026. Mapping the dealers' designations onto the two generations is our own reading of public listings and not a manufacturer statement.

The problem in daily life is that some dealers show old datasheets against new part numbers, and some sell old stock at the prices of the new generation. So write the module designation into the order — CM710-1, that is the Impinj E710 — and have it confirmed in writing before delivery. That is the single most important procurement note with this manufacturer, and it costs you one line in the order text.

On the C5 itself the position is a little simpler, because the device is offered only in the current generation. But the same care applies for a different reason: on the product page Chainway writes merely “based on Impinj E Series chips” and names no single model. Anyone who wants to know what they are buying asks.

A word on the form factor. At 626 grams with the battery, the C5 is normal for a handheld in this class, but that is not light, and the pistol grip with its 13,400 mAh battery comes on top. The device is built to be carried through a shop and swept about for two hours, not to be picked up quickly at the sales counter. For the till a different shape is right, and there is more on that under alternatives.

What the C5 explicitly is not

It is not stock control software and not a till system. The device hands a list of EPC numbers to the application running on it, and what becomes of them is decided by that software. Nor does it print anything: the labels are produced beforehand on an RFID printer that writes text, barcode and chip in one pass. And it does not check by itself whether a number it has read belongs to the right article. That link is created when you marry the RFID label to the existing barcode, and it then lives in your stock file. How that step works in practice is set out in our guide to RFID stocktaking; the basics of the technology are covered in the RFID guide and on the page about RFID readers.

The update promise: Android 16

The point deserves a section of its own, because it almost always drops out of datasheet comparisons. A handheld gets compared on range, read rate and price. What actually decides the next five years is whether the device still receives security updates and whether the stocktaking app still starts on it.

Android applications are built against a target API level, and the Google Play requirements for that level rise every year. An app built today for a current Android will often still run on an old device — until one day it does not, because a library requires a newer system version. On a device you are depreciating over five years that is not a theoretical risk; it is the most likely reason for an early replacement.

Two qualifications belong with it, and we put them as plainly as the argument itself. First, Chainway names no date. The product page says “upgradable to Android 16”, not “update in quarter X”. Second, a statement on a product page is not a contractual commitment. If that statement carries your decision, have your supplier confirm it in writing, ideally with a period attached. It costs one email and, in case of doubt, creates something to rely on.

For context: on the C72 Chainway states Android 11 and 13, security updates on a 90-day cycle and support for management solutions such as Soti MobiControl. A statement about a future Android version is missing there. That does not make the C72 a bad device; it makes the C5 the better buy on this one point.

One thing this section does not claim: that the update will arrive, or when. We report a manufacturer statement and we mark it as one. Anyone selling you the C5 on the strength of Android 16 without that qualification is overselling a line on a web page.

What the reader module actually does

The module: keep the manufacturer statement and the distributor statement apart

Here a distinction matters that gets blurred on many dealer pages. Chainway itself writes on the C5 product page only that the reader module is based on Impinj E Series chips, and names support for Impinj Gen2X. No single model appears there. It is the official European distributor Cisper that specifies the Impinj E710 — and, in the same breath, names the processor as a MediaTek MT6765, where Chainway carries only an octa-core at 2.3 GHz.

In practice that is undramatic: the E Series consists of the E310, the E510 and the E710, and the performance figures of the C5 at 1,300 tags per second fit the E710. Formally it is still a difference, and we mark it. The figure “E710” is a distributor statement, not a manufacturer statement. If your software or your integrator requires a particular module, that line belongs in the order.

Range: 33 metres in the catalogue, 8 to 11 in the shop

Chainway quotes three ranges, each with the tag used to measure it.

What is notable is that Chainway writes the measuring note out itself on the C5 page. In the original it says that ranges are measured outdoors in a low-interference environment and are affected by tags and environment. That is more openness than many manufacturers manage, and it answers the decisive question directly: these are open-field values.

Look at the third figure more closely. The 33 metres are reached with an anti-metal tag measuring 130 by 42 millimetres. That is an industrial label, larger than a business card. A hangtag in fashion retail is a fraction of it, has a much smaller antenna and hangs between fabric and a steel rail rather than free in the air. So the 33 metres say something about the reader module and little about your shop.

The good news sits in the same number: 8 to 11 metres is generous for a shop stocktake. At that range you sweep a complete rail from the aisle without touching it, and you reach upper shelves from the floor. The difference from devices with roughly a metre of range is qualitative: there you have to walk up to every single piece. The basics are set out on our page about RFID readers.

Read rate, and what it means in fashion retail

1,300 tags per second sounds like a marketing figure, but it is easy to place. EPC Gen2 works with slotted anti-collision: the reader calls, the tags answer one after another in randomly chosen time slots, collisions are resolved and rounds repeated. So it is not a simultaneous read but a very fast sequence. 1,300 answers per second means a rail with 200 pieces is captured, if all the labels lie in the field, in a sixth of a second.

That is exactly why the read rate is almost never the criterion in fashion retail. For 4,000 pieces, 900 tags per second works out at 4.4 seconds and 1,300 tags per second at around 3 seconds. Both vanish against the time it takes to walk 120 square metres. The read rate only becomes relevant when you are driving pallets through a doorway.

Where the high rate does earn its keep is completeness. The more tags stand in the field at once, the more collisions and repeat rounds there are. A reader that plays those rounds through quickly captures a densely packed rail completely in a single sweep, instead of letting individual pieces slip past. The rate buys you completeness, not speed — and that is why the gap between 900 and 1,300 tags per second across the two device generations matters more than it sounds.

Frequencies, transmit power and protocols

The C5 is built for three frequency ranges: 865 to 868 MHz for Europe, 902 to 928 MHz for North America and 920 to 925 MHz for other regions. That is hardware, not a setting. A device for the United States cannot be switched over to Europe. More on that in the section on radio approval.

One figure is missing and we say so openly: Chainway makes no statement for the C5 about whether the dBm figures are conducted at the antenna port or are to be read as ERP. For running a shop that has no consequence, because the EU variant has to work within the allocated limits in any case. For a technical tender it is a gap you should have the distributor close. The only ERP figure Chainway names anywhere is in the manual of the sister model C66 and reads 23.58 dBm e.r.p. — it does not apply to the C5.

On the relationship between label and device: which chip sits in your labels affects the achievable range at least as much as the reader does. What fits together is set out on our page about RFID labels and chip types.

The Chainway C5 in full

All figures come from the Chainway product page for the C5, retrieved 31.08.2026, unless marked otherwise.

Where the table says a figure is not given, we found it neither on the product page nor in the specification table; we record the gap rather than fill it. Where a figure comes from the distributor Cisper rather than from Chainway, it says so in the row.

Battery, grip battery and hot swap

The battery concept is the second reason to prefer the C5 to the C72, and it is cleanly thought through. Inside the device sits a removable 7,000 mAh battery. Inside the pistol grip sits a second battery with 13,400 mAh, likewise removable. On top of that there is a small 100 mAh backup cell whose only job is to keep the device alive while the battery is being changed.

In practice that means you can swap the battery in the middle of a stocktake without shutting the device down, without restarting the app and without losing the count. Anyone who has ever begun a half-finished stocktake again because of a flat battery knows what those hundred milliampere-hours are worth.

On the C72 this very point is unclear. Chainway says explicitly of the C66 that the battery is removable; of the C72 the manufacturer does not say. Of the C5 it does. That is a small but real difference when you are planning over five years: a battery loses capacity, and a device whose battery can be swapped for the price of a spare part lives longer than one that has to be sent in for it.

The other side of it is in the next paragraph. Chainway gives no battery life in hours for the C5. For the C72 the datasheet carries more than 12 hours of continuous operation and more than 500 hours of standby. For the C5 there is nothing in that line. Arithmetically the combined capacity of 7,000 and 13,400 mAh is well above the 8,000 mAh of the C72, which argues for at least the same figure — but it is not documented, and so we do not claim it.

Stocktaking in a fashion shop: the arithmetic for 4,000 pieces

Take a concrete shop: 120 square metres of sales floor, 4,000 pieces in stock, all tagged with an RFID hangtag, plus a small stockroom, four fitting rooms and a window. One member of staff, one Chainway C5 with the grip fitted, the stock software on the device. The most common mistake in RFID presentations is to make the read rate the selling point. It is not one. Do the sum this way instead.

Read the table from the bottom up and you see the message. Between a pure read time of three seconds and a real stocktake of one to two hours lie three orders of magnitude. That time sits entirely in the handling: in the walking, the lifting, the reading again. A device that reads twice as fast shortens a stocktake by exactly nothing. A device with more range does, because it lets you reach stacks and upper shelves without touching the goods — and that is precisely where the C5 is well placed.

Where the time in a fashion shop really goes

Hanging goods on rails are the easy part. The labels hang free, the spacing is even, the goods are at chest height. A rail with 200 pieces is done as you walk past. It gets awkward in four places.

• Stacked goods on tables and in cubbies. Jumpers in stacks of ten to fifteen screen one another. The only remedy is to probe the stack from the side and from above, or to restack it once.
• Upper shelves and shoeboxes above head height. With eight to eleven metres of usable range you reach them from the floor — provided the label is not facing the back panel.
• Proximity to metal. Goods lying directly against a steel fixture or a security gate are read unreliably. What our page on labels says about placement applies here one to one.
• Fitting rooms, the window, the repair basket and reservations. These are the classic sources of discrepancies — not because RFID fails, but because the goods there were simply not counted.

Is the one-to-two-hour stocktake realistic?

Yes, for a shop of this size. But the figure belongs cleanly labelled: the one to two hours are our own projection, derived from the floor area, the number of pieces and the time frame described above. It appears in no datasheet. What Chainway documents is 1,300 tags per second and the open-field range; everything beyond that is arithmetic and experience.

Two conditions have to hold. First, the stock has to be fully tagged. A piece without a label will not be found, not even by a very good reader. For tagging legacy stock we reckon on 200 to 300 pieces per person per hour — so for 4,000 pieces, around two working days for two people, once. Second, the labels have to be sensibly placed, which means not flat between metal and goods. How the whole exercise runs in detail is set out under RFID stocktaking, and there is a step-by-step account for the shop floor on our page about stocktaking in retail, with a ready-made stocktake template to go with it.

The comparison with existing practice makes the difference plain. Counting by hand with a tally sheet, or a barcode stocktake with a scan per item, ties up a whole weekend and several people in a shop of this size. That is why it happens once a year. A stocktake that takes two hours can be done monthly — and that is exactly where the effect on stock accuracy comes from: without RFID, stock records in fashion retail typically sit at 65 to 75 per cent accuracy; with regular RFID counting at 93 to 99 per cent, with a sales effect put at up to 5.5 per cent (Beck 2018, ECR Shrinkage and On-Shelf Availability Group and GS1 UK).

The grip battery plays a part here that you only come to value in the second year. If you count monthly, you do not charge the device every evening; you take it out of the drawer every few weeks. A device with two large batteries and a hot swap forgives that. A device with a sealed-in battery does not.

What the C5 is not good for

The missing battery life figure is the most annoying point

Chainway states more than 12 hours of continuous operation and more than 500 hours of standby for the C72. For the C5 the same line is empty. For a device whose distinguishing feature is partly its battery concept, that is a strange gap. We cannot close it: we do not convert the capacities into hours, because current draw during continuous reading depends on the transmit power, the display brightness and the radio connection. Ask the distributor for a battery life figure for continuous operation with the UHF module active, and have it given to you in writing.

626 grams is no lightweight

And the pistol grip adds more battery on top. For comparison, the C72 weighs 375 grams without and 673 grams with its UHF grip, so the C5 is in the same class. A handheld is not held at rest; it is held out, often with the arm bent, and swept. After an hour and a half that is noticeable. If you take stock in pairs, take turns. If you work alone, plan breaks in rather than having your arm dictate them later.

Twelve months of manufacturer warranty is too little

And we say that plainly. Chainway gives 12 months from delivery; an extension to 36 months can be bought. Some EU dealers advertise 24 months — that is the statutory liability for conformity owed by the seller, not the manufacturer's warranty, and legally a different claim with a different distribution of the burden of proof. On a device in daily use, the second year is exactly the year in which the first failures arrive: the charging port, the battery, the trigger. Price the warranty extension in from the start, or take the risk knowingly. What it should not do is disappear from the comparison.

The empty certifications row stays an open point

Chainway publishes no list of standards for the C5. That is not a sign that something is wrong — but it is a difference from manufacturers who set their standards out openly, and it moves work across to you. Details are in the section on radio approval.

Wrong device for the till

The handheld form with a pistol grip is optimised for hours of aiming and triggering, not for a quick grab across the sales counter. If you want to use RFID in the selling process as well — goods into the bowl, every piece captured at once — you need a presentation scanner such as the Zebra DS9908R for that. The C5 remains the device for stocktaking, goods-in, transfers and the search for a single piece.

And the documentation as a whole

Bluetooth 5.0 rather than 5.2 or 5.3 has no consequence in daily use. That an accessory matrix is missing, that no support roadmap is published and that ERP figures are not stated is each, taken alone, of no consequence either. Taken together it means you have to put more questions to the distributor than you would with a Western manufacturer. Budget for that and you get a very solid device at a fair price. Do not budget for it and you are surprised later.

What the Chainway C5 costs

All prices are net, excluding VAT, as at 31.08.2026, source kaufid.de. German gross prices are not reproduced here: they carry German VAT and mean nothing outside Germany. Business buyers in another EU country with a valid VAT identification number are invoiced under the reverse-charge procedure and account for the tax in their own country. List prices are snapshots; through a distributor in project business they are frequently lower. Check price, availability, frequency variant and module designation with the dealer before ordering. HANGCOUNT has no sales relationship with the dealers named and does not sell this device at these prices.

The quantity break is remarkably flat: between one unit and five there is not quite 50 euro, so around five per cent. For a single shop that is of no importance. For a chain with five sites it is 250 euro — pleasant, but not an argument that turns a device choice around. The real price argument with Chainway is not the break but the base level.

Where to buy the device

Chainway does not sell to end customers and keeps no searchable directory of authorised dealers. In practice there are three routes.

• kaufid.de and shopid.eu (operated by ITFutuRe s.r.o., Czech Republic): open prices, visible stock levels, ordering without registration. That is the simplest route for one to five devices and the source of the prices on this page.
• Cisper Electronics B.V., Almere in the Netherlands: official Chainway distributor for Europe, project business, datasheets with additional detail. The right contact when you need a declaration of conformity, a confirmed module designation or a warranty extension.
• BizTech Distribution, Germany: registered B2B resellers only. Not directly accessible to end customers, but the route by which a local systems house procures.

In Austria and Switzerland we found no distributor of their own. Buyers there purchase from the EU addresses named above, or through a local systems house.

Direct import from China is no option for small quantities. Anyone importing a radio device from a third country becomes, under Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020, the responsible economic operator: with their own address on or with the device, with the duty to hold the technical documentation available for market surveillance, and with liability for the radio conformity of the device. On top of that come the national registrations for waste electrical equipment and for batteries, packaging obligations, an EORI number and import VAT. The detail differs by member state; the principle does not. For a single handheld the effort bears no relation to the saving.

What comes alongside the device

The device price is rarely the whole price. Budget for these items.

• RFID labels. Bought in small quantities, around 12 to 15 cents apiece. For an initial run of 4,000 pieces that is 480 to 600 euro; after that they are needed only for new goods. Detail on the page about RFID labels.
• A cradle. A device needs a fixed charging place, or it will be lying flat in the office on the morning of the stocktake. On the C5 both the device and the grip battery want charging.
• A spare battery. The 7,000 mAh battery is expressly removable, and the backup cell makes a swap possible while the device is running. A second battery is therefore not a luxury but the reason a stocktake need not be abandoned.
• The warranty extension to 36 months. At 12 months of manufacturer warranty and daily use, this is the item we would most readily budget for.
• An RFID printer. If you want to tag your own goods — and in fashion retail that is the normal case — you need a printer that prints the label and writes the chip in one pass. See RFID printers.
• Software. A reader without stock software delivers a list of numbers. Only the software turns that into a stock figure, a reconciliation against the till system and an exceptions list.
• Setup and handover. Configure the device, join it to the WLAN, settle the label layout, brief the staff. For the handover itself we allow around half an hour — operating it is simple.

Charging, holding, managing

We would rather say openly what we cannot document than paper over it: Chainway publishes no complete accessory list for the C5 with part numbers. What is documented is the construction — a detachable pistol grip with its own, likewise removable battery, a removable device battery, and a backup cell for a swap while running. Which cradles, multi-bay chargers and mounts are offered alongside is to be configured with the distributor.

What you realistically need

• A fixed charging place where the device lands automatically after closing. Remember that on the C5 there are two batteries to charge when the grip is in use.
• A second device battery. On the C5 this pays off twice over, because the backup cell allows the swap without a restart.
• A wrist strap or a holster, so that the device is not put down between two rails and then forgotten. At 626 grams a strap is not an accessory but protection for the wrist.
• A screen protector, if the device is also used in the stockroom. IP65 protects against dust and jets of water, not against a scratch from a box cutter.

Software and connection

Chainway supplies development material for its devices: an Android Studio API, a Xamarin API and demo applications with source code. For running a shop that is rarely the relevant level. You do not need knowledge of an SDK; you need an app that keeps the stock, marries the labels to the existing barcode and hands the result to your till system as CSV or Excel.

That sequence — print the label, write the chip, marry it to the barcode, count, reconcile — is the actual core of an RFID roll-out in fashion retail. What it looks like step by step is set out under RFID stocktaking. The basics of frequencies, chips and read physics are in the overview article RFID explained. If you are planning fixed reading points at a doorway rather than a handheld, start with RFID antennas.

When another device fits better

Prices rounded, net, as at 31.08.2026. Chainway prices: kaufid.de for the C5 and the R6, shopid.eu for the C72. For the Zebra devices whose prices are not given here, the figures are on the individual device pages; we do not repeat them, so as not to circulate stale numbers. Ranges are manufacturer figures and open-field values; in a shop the usable distances are considerably lower.

Our honest recommendation

C5 against C72. The C72 is around 50 euro cheaper and better documented on battery life: more than 12 hours of continuous operation is in its datasheet. The C5 has the larger display, the battery that is documented as removable, the grip battery with a hot swap, and the update promise of Android 16. If you intend to run a device for five years, take the C5. If you need a documented battery life figure because your stocktake runs twelve hours at a stretch, take the C72.

C5 against R6. The R6 is a sled reader for a phone you already own and at 659 euro net costs around a third less. It is the right way in for a shop that first wants to see whether RFID suits it. Two points speak against it once things get serious: IP54 instead of IP65, and the phone is part of the solution and its weakest point. Add a dedicated company phone and the price advantage is largely used up.

Chainway against Zebra. Against the cheaper Zebra models Chainway sits at roughly the same level: the Zebra EM45 RFID costs around 789 euro net, the Zebra DS9908R from 1,080 USD, unconverted euro. The gap only opens against the full-featured devices, the Zebra RFD40 and the Zebra TC22R. So the argument for Chainway is not price alone but sizing: for a shop that takes stock once a year and otherwise recounts twice a week, a device with 1,300 tags per second is enough. The argument for Zebra is the documentation, the service network and the longer warranty. For completeness, the Zebra TC201 and the MEFERI ME87 have pages of their own; the MEFERI is technically interesting but neither priced nor reliably obtainable in Europe.

When none of these handhelds fits. If your main interest is at the till rather than in stocktaking, a presentation scanner is the right form factor. And if you only occasionally look for a single piece, a short-range device will do — for a full stocktake it will not, and we say that plainly. A complete overview of every device is in the RFID hardware section.

Radio approval: what applies in Europe

The European frame

UHF RFID readers in Europe operate in the band from 865 to 868 MHz. That band is harmonised across the European Union and the European Economic Area through CEPT recommendation ERC/REC 70-03 on short range devices, and the technical basis is the harmonised standard ETSI EN 302 208, which permits up to 2 watt ERP for interrogators in this band.

Because the band is harmonised, the same device is lawful in every EU and EEA country. What differs is the national regulator that administers the general authorisation: the Bundesnetzagentur in Germany, ARCEP in France, UKE in Poland, RDI in the Netherlands, and so on for the other member states. The list is longer than that and there is no point reproducing it here; the point is that the frame is common and only the administering authority changes.

For normal operation within that general authorisation, no individual licence and no registration is needed, and no spectrum fee is payable. You buy the device, you switch it on, and you keep the conformity papers. That is the whole of it for a shop with one handheld.

The United Kingdom sits outside this. Since leaving the EU it applies its own rules, with Ofcom Interface Requirement IR 2030 for licence-exempt short range devices and UKCA marking in place of CE; if you are buying for a UK site, check the current position with your supplier rather than relying on the European frame described here.

What Chainway says — and what it does not

Here a difference from other manufacturers in this section belongs openly named. Chainway names ETSI EN 302 208 nowhere. Not on the C5 product page, not in the datasheets, not in the manuals. The “Certifications” row is empty on the manufacturer's page for the C5, and it is empty at every distributor we checked.

What is documented, by contrast, is the following.

• Chainway offers the C5 expressly as a variant for 865 to 868 MHz, that is for the European band, alongside 902 to 928 MHz and 920 to 925 MHz for other regions.
• In the manuals of other Chainway devices, among them the C72 and the C66, there is the declaration that the device complies with the Radio Equipment Directive 2014/53/EU, the European RED that covers every radio device placed on the EU market.
• A single ERP figure appears anywhere at Chainway at all: 23.58 dBm e.r.p. in the Europe section of the C66 manual. It does not apply to the C5.
• CE and RoHS certificates are available for download from an EU distributor — not from the manufacturer itself.
• The FCC IDs that can be found for individual Chainway devices evidence the United States authorisation and not EU conformity. Anyone citing an FCC ID as proof of fitness for operation in Europe is confusing two legal systems.

What CE means and what it does not

The CE marking is the manufacturer's declaration, or that of the responsible economic operator, that the device meets the applicable EU rules, in the case of radio devices above all the Radio Equipment Directive 2014/53/EU. It is not an official test badge and not a permit. For you as the operator it is nonetheless the decisive document: it means the manufacturer declares conformity and is liable for it. The accompanying paper is called the EU declaration of conformity, it lists the standards applied, and it is the document in which a reference to EN 302 208 would appear. That is exactly why it is worth asking for.

The awkward part: devices built for other regions

The C5 is built for three frequency ranges. The frequency is a hardware order variant, not a setting in a menu. A device for 902 to 928 MHz cannot be switched over to Europe, may not be operated here and cannot lawfully be placed on the EU market — regardless of the fact that it looks identical, runs the same software and may appear cheaper in an online shop. That band is allocated differently here, among other things to mobile network services. Such a device will work technically; that is precisely the problem.

At dealers you can recognise the European build from an addition such as ETSI in the item description. Do not rely on the spelling, though: write the frequency into the order, as UHF 865–868 MHz, EU build. Together with the module designation those are the two lines that avoid trouble with this manufacturer. Be particularly alert with marketplace listings and grey imports, where stock built for North America is regularly sold without any note.

The basics of frequencies, power limits and the difference between ERP and EIRP are set out at greater length in the overview article RFID explained. One frequent misunderstanding concerns the comparison with the United States, where 4 watt EIRP applies. Because ERP and EIRP differ by 2.15 dB, 2 watt ERP corresponds to roughly 3.3 watt EIRP, so the American limit is only about 20 per cent above the European one and not double, as is occasionally written. That conversion is our own. What part the antenna plays is set out under RFID antennas.

This section summarises the position as at 31.08.2026 and is no substitute for legal advice. Particular installations, such as fixed doorway antennas at high transmit power, carry additional requirements, and national rules on siting can apply.

Frequently asked questions about the Chainway C5

Read on

Sources and the date of the figures

Every figure on this page is either documented or marked as an estimate, a projection or not documented. Manufacturer statements are named as such, and so are distributor statements. All online sources were retrieved on 31.08.2026.

• Chainway, product page “C5 Handheld Computer”: chainway.net — C5, retrieved 31.08.2026. The source of every datasheet figure on this page: UHF module “based on Impinj E Series chips” with Impinj Gen2X, 865–868 / 902–928 / 920–925 MHz, 1 W (30 dBm) adjustable +5 to +30 dBm, 2 W (33 dBm) optional and not for Europe, range 30 m (Impinj MR6, 70 × 15 mm), 32 m (Impinj M750), 33 m (Alien H3 anti-metal, 130 × 42 mm), 1,300+ tags/s with circular polarisation, scan engine Chainway CM60 or Zebra SE4710, Android 11/13 and “upgradable to Android 16”, octa-core 2.3 GHz, 4 GB + 128 GB (optionally 4 GB + 64 GB), display 6 inches at 2160 × 1080 or 5 inches at 1280 × 720 in the fingerprint version, battery 7,000 mAh removable, pistol grip 13,400 mAh removable, 100 mAh backup cell, 626 g with the battery, 178.8 × 96.5 × 128.4 mm with the grip, IP65, repeated 1.5 m drops onto concrete, operating -20 to +50 °C, storage -40 to +70 °C, WLAN 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac on 2.4 and 5 GHz, Bluetooth 5.0, LTE optional including band 20, GPS with AGPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, NFC, optionally 2 × PSAM and a fingerprint reader, camera 5 MP front and 13 MP rear.
• Chainway, measuring note on range on the same product page, in the original: “Ranges are measured in the open outdoors and low interference environment… affected by tags and environment.” Retrieved 31.08.2026. The conversion to a usable figure of around 8 to 11 metres is an estimate by HANGCOUNT and not a manufacturer figure.
• Chainway, the “Certifications” row on the C5 product page: empty. No reference to ETSI EN 302 208 could be found on the product page, in datasheets or in manuals. The same holds for every distributor we checked. Retrieved 31.08.2026.
• Cisper Electronics B.V., Almere, the Netherlands, official Chainway distributor for Europe — specifies the UHF module of the C5 as the Impinj E710 and the processor as a MediaTek MT6765. cisper.com, retrieved 31.08.2026. Both of those figures come from the distributor, not from the manufacturer.
• kaufid.de, prices for the Chainway C5, version C5-A13-2UN64 (2D imager, UHF RFID, NFC, compass, Android 13): 991.50 euro net, from 3 units 961.80 euro net, from 5 units 941.90 euro net. kaufid.de, retrieved 31.08.2026. German gross prices are not reproduced here; outside Germany they mean nothing.
• Chainway, warranty terms: 12 months from delivery, extension to 36 months available to buy. chainway.net — Warranty, retrieved 31.08.2026.
• Chainway, C72 product page — used for the comparison inside the range, in particular for the battery life of more than 12 hours of continuous operation stated there and missing on the C5. chainway.net — C72, retrieved 31.08.2026.
• Chainway, R6 product page (sled reader) — used for the comparison in the alternatives section. chainway.net — R6, retrieved 31.08.2026.
• shopid.eu and kaufid.de, operated by ITFutuRe s.r.o. (Czech Republic) — open prices, visible stock levels, ordering without registration. Used for the prices of the other Chainway devices in the comparison. Retrieved 31.08.2026.
• CEPT recommendation ERC/REC 70-03 on the use of short range devices, annex on non-specific short range devices and RFID — the instrument through which the 865–868 MHz band is harmonised across the EU and the EEA. Retrieved 31.08.2026.
• ETSI EN 302 208, harmonised standard for RFID radio equipment in the band 865–868 MHz with up to 2 W ERP: etsi.org — EN 302 208 (PDF), retrieved 31.08.2026. The standard is the legal frame; it is expressly not claimed on this page as a manufacturer statement about the C5.
• National general authorisations administered by the member states, for example Bundesnetzagentur in Germany, ARCEP in France, UKE in Poland and RDI in the Netherlands. Retrieved 31.08.2026. The basis for the statement that no individual licence and no registration is needed for normal operation.
• Ofcom, Interface Requirement IR 2030 — the United Kingdom regime for licence-exempt short range devices, outside the EU framework since the UK left the Union. Retrieved 31.08.2026.
• Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 on market surveillance and the compliance of products, Article 4 — the obligations of the responsible economic operator on direct import. eur-lex.europa.eu, retrieved 31.08.2026.
• Beck, A. (2018), ECR Shrinkage & On-Shelf Availability Group / GS1 UK — stock accuracy without RFID 65 to 75 per cent, with RFID 93 to 99 per cent, sales effect up to +5.5 per cent.
• Comparison prices for the Zebra devices in the table above: Zebra EM45 RFID from 789.00 € net (RoW-800 MHz build, part BMMC452), ico.de; a second dealer quotes 862.05 € net. Zebra DS9908R: 824.00 € at mediaform.de, — whether that figure is net or gross is not stated on the page, and a second dealer quotes no price at all. We therefore carry no euro price for this device, only the US dealer price from 1,080 USD (Barcodes Inc.), unconverted. Retrieved 01.09.2026.

All figures are as at 31.08.2026. Prices and availability change; check both with the dealer or distributor before ordering. HANGCOUNT has no sales relationship with the dealers named and does not sell the devices described at the prices given.