Spot Trace Satellite Tracking Device | Handheld Tracker for Hiking, Camping, Cars, Kids, Outdoor Activities, and Assets with Globalstar Network Coverage | Subscription Applicable

New review:Well guys I've had a year now to test it out and besides a small radius around my house, it actually works really well. I went on vacation and work trips and used it with no problems. I was able to send and receive. I highly recommend this device especially if you go off the grid or want that extra net of safety that if you push that button, you WILL be saved. I highly recommend the overwatch protection thing they offer as well. For $29 a year not only will you be saved, but you won't have to pay for the rescue!Old review:I will do a more in depth review later but I had to come on here and worn you all before you buy it.This thing is able to send messages all day but it absolutely will not receive them in any location that has cell network 5G. The 5G interferes with the signal. The only place this is mentioned on their website is deep in the FAQ. No where on the sales page. I see they’ve updated the website to say the spot x is specifically for when you’re “off the grid and out of cellphone range.” There is no way for customers to know that that means it absolutely won’t work when one is in cellphone range.If you are ok with just being able to send your friends, family, and search and rescue messages but not revive any info back the. This is the one for you. If however, you’d like to be able to have a conversation, this ain’t it chief.Since it can’t receive confirmation from the satellites that the message was delivered. It just keeps trying to send them until it gives up. This uses much more battery.Additionally, no other messages will send while it is attempting to send the first one. The only work around is to send it and then wait until you think it sent, the. Cancel the message. This allows the next message to be sent.Attached you’ll see a photo of me testing the SOS feature. BAD NEWS. It works but the only way to cancel it after testing is for the satellite to beam back that it received the cancellation. this is impossible in a 5G area. You have an hour to test the SOS feature before it turns off and actually calls search and rescue. I was on hold for 30 minutes trying to get a hold of customer service to see if force restarting it would properly cancel the SOS. Time became to close for comfort and they still hadn’t answered so I had to decide between the time running out and rescue being wrongfully sent, or taking the risk of doing a force reset and them coming anyway. Luckily the force reset did work. I didn’t know that though until many minutes later when customer service answered and was able to check for me. The cool thing though is that at least customer service is 24/7.The website says that they’ll never ask for your secret account pin via voice and you’ll just input it on the phones keypad. This isn’t true as they asked for it via voice. The next day it was sent to customer service over the chat feature as well. I came to find that customer service literally knows everything about you. Name, home address, exact location if you have the device. Made me wonder if they can pull this information at anytime or only when a customer calls.

I see a number of negative reviews on this device. I had one of the first gen Spot messengers that I ditched for the Garmin Inreach (which does have a number of advantages over Spot--complete global coverage being one of them). I just downgraded my Inreach plan and picked up a Spot X. So far I'm glad I did.First, this is important to understand: it's a satellite device. You really have to be outside in order for it to work reliably. It looks like people are picking these up expecting them to be some sort of everywhere-Blackberry'ish device. It's not. But it's close enough such that, properly configured, it will give people a way to reach you (and you them) in a semi-reasonable amount of time. It also does a stellar job of tracking and reporting your outdoor location.Bottom line: I've spent about 2 weeks with it on my hip, indoors and out, and here's what I've found. Outdoors, it always works. It tracks, sends and receives messages perfectly. In the car it's a little less reliable but setting it in a little suction cup holder on the windshield also works perfectly. In the house, if I set it on a table by the window it works some-to-most of the time. Anywhere else indoors is a black hole. Battery life is reasonable although I don't think it'll run 10 days 24x7 with tracking at 10 minutes. So take a solar battery if you're going to be off-grid a while.Things I wish it did better: the user interface. It's a little cumbersome to see what did and didn't get sent. It would be nice if there were an "if you really want to send this, you need to stand still and hold it up in the air" beeps after a couple of minutes of not sending. Email-to-text has room for improvement but if you just text message phones it works well. Also, there's no 2-way coverage in Australia? Really?! The one-way beacon worked great there but it would be nice to text from the outback. But for the Americas, Western Europe and Africa it seems to have you covered. I'll say that the one-way version also worked flawlessly in The Gambia a couple of years back.But for $20 bucks a month ($30 a month if you want to spend your whole trek texting all your buddies every waking minute) it's a good deal. You just have to understand what you're getting.