The cheap Baofengs and similar are good for when you already have the skills and professional equipment (including off-grid power) to set up that “separate comms shop.” Once it’s possible to set up a powered, central base station and appropriately located repeater, with the ability to charge everyone’s batteries, then it’s a good idea to stock a pile of cheap radios to hand out for use by guard posts and patrols. Some folk will show up with their own radios, most won’t, so they get a cheap handout. The command net (connects site leadership) will be on a different frequency and should be encrypted if possible. This won’t happen with a cheap radio.
If you can only afford to buy one or two radios and you intend to leave them in your go bag until the batteries die, then a non-functional brick you didn’t spend much money on will hurt less when you throw it away.
Middle road: Having a radio to use with whatever centralized comms you encounter after SHTF requires a fairly robust radio, decent antenna (stock antennas are crap) and at least two spare batteries. If you intend to actually be able to use it, you’ll need practice. Check out http://www.amrron.com. Then decide what frequencies you’ll be practicing with and buy decent gear for those purposes. Most folks that are serious about this wind up with the Ham Technican license at a minimum. This enables practicing with local hams and so forth. You’ll need gear you can drop, pick up, and still have it work. Baofengs break pretty easily.