Thread: Garmin In Reach

Look up Zoleo. New compotation to in reach. Half the price.

I took an inreach mini to Fiordland, the family really appreciated the regular contact and was also able to contact chopper and confirm pick up spot and timings. I liked the premium weather forecast which was accurate and when bluetoothed to phone was easy to message and see the info. For me will not replace the plb or gps it is a two way contact tool.

Now that looks very interesting - Zoleo. Wonder the price of their plans are? Looks to be quite user friendly too.

https://zoleoinc.cdn.prismic.io/zole...r-brochure.pdf

Wow their plans are dear!
All plans and pricing is AUD$
The use the same network and sos as Garmin.
https://www.zoleo.com/en-nz/plans
Plus exchange rate .

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To the OP
Convenience of satellite communication aside, when you genuinely need picked up it’s all about the robustness of the system for the people looking for you, not necessarily the other way round.
For proper SAR applications a PLB is the better option no doubt about it.

I have both an InReach mini and a PLB, I use them for different purposes. The PLB is obviously for emergency use only and I’ve thankfully never used it. I use the InReach mini for communicating with my wife. I’m often in places without cellphone coverage and I’m often late, I hunt by myself a lot too.
I love the way you just tether it to you phone and use the app to send messages using your normal phone contacts.
If I had to get one thing I’d get a PLB, for safety reasons, but if you have the cash, get both.

Originally Posted by Steven708

I took an inreach mini to Fiordland, the family really appreciated the regular contact and was also able to contact chopper and confirm pick up spot and timings. I liked the premium weather forecast which was accurate and when bluetoothed to phone was easy to message and see the info. For me will not replace the plb or gps it is a two way contact tool.

A mate took one into Fiordland , I was meant to be sending weather forecasts to him. He got very patchy coverage, some days none at all.

Originally Posted by craigc

I have both an InReach mini and a PLB, I use them for different purposes. The PLB is obviously for emergency use only and I’ve thankfully never used it. I use the InReach mini for communicating with my wife. I’m often in places without cellphone coverage and I’m often late, I hunt by myself a lot too.
I love the way you just tether it to you phone and use the app to send messages using your normal phone contacts.
If I had to get one thing I’d get a PLB, for safety reasons, but if you have the cash, get both.

What he said. I have both - a 66i (GPS with inreach) and a PLB. The PLB is the "oh-shit" device - dedicated battery, one-trick (call SAR) better coverage. The Inreach is surprisingly useful. You can communicate a delay, organise a chopper (don't need SAR but do need a pick-up), etc. So that sort of restricts the PLB use to the kinds of things where you really want SAR - which in my opinion is what they should be used for. I hear of people activating a PLB because they have run out of water, or something where its not life or death... get an InReach and organise your own chopper at your own expense for the trivial shit. If I ever had a real emergency I would use both - I'm sure SAR would appreciate any information/context that could be provided. (Lost? Or Injured? Urgency? etc)

One plus for the inreach is if you have someone at home keeping an eye on your live track and you've become incapacitated and can't trigger an SOS, then at least SAR will have a good idea where to go looking.

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Originally Posted by craigc

I have both an InReach mini and a PLB, I use them for different purposes. The PLB is obviously for emergency use only and I’ve thankfully never used it. I use the InReach mini for communicating with my wife. I’m often in places without cellphone coverage and I’m often late, I hunt by myself a lot too.
I love the way you just tether it to you phone and use the app to send messages using your normal phone contacts.
If I had to get one thing I’d get a PLB, for safety reasons, but if you have the cash, get both.

@craigc so you just text on your phone when the mini is linked in? I loaned a 66i garmin and i hated the old school texting on it. tap tap down across type thing. And a lot of shit on the gps i will never use

Yes that is correct.
You Bluetooth to a inreach via the earthmate app and you text like normal to any of your contacts. All inreach models have this capability. It beats tapping away like texting was like 25 years ago.

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I have a Garmin 200i. I have always used a spot x device in the past but since getting my dog it made sense to just consolidate all my devices and get the Garmin, GPS, Inreach, Dog tracking etc all on the one device. I was expecting stellar performance after watching all the Garmin vs Spot reviews on YouTube (mostly from the states) and nearly all of them singing the praises of the Garmin for reliable and quick messaging. However, that has not been my experience at all, I found with the Spot X it was often slow to get a message out but it always got there in the end. The Garmin however has on several occasions said that a message has been sent but it was never received at the other end, the opposite way around has been true also, it’s actually made for some entertaining conversations with my wife when parts of the conversation disappear into thin air. Still a handy device but not cracked up to the hype Garmin would have you believe, I also now carry a PLB, I used to trust my Spot X but wouldn’t trust the Garmin with my life

I have had the odd msg to arrive too. It isn't very often tho.
From what I've researched into the matter in the US it is very good but in backwater nz where we do shit different for no good reason it doesn't.
It is to do with the cell companies.
2degrees was the worst by far.
There used to be a feature available that sent a GPS reference point with each message. Unfortunately that ment that the cell providers recognized those a spam an blocked the messages from being received by a nz cell user.
A message from Garmin to nz users came to ensure this feature was disabled so nz cell providers didn't block messages as spam.
So if you haven't disabled this feature it still tries to attach ref point and gets blocked as spam.
This doesn't happen at the user point it's something in the network transition from iridium.

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It will be interesting to see if Apple manages to pull this feature off in the next iPhone model

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/iphon...-means-for-you

Originally Posted by Staffnurse41

It will be interesting to see if Apple manages to pull this feature off in the next iPhone model

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/iphon...-means-for-you

That would assume we all want iPhones which I for one certainly do not. Thankfully this house is Apple free and long may it continue.

Only fruit type apples are allowed in.