Gear Review: SpotX: Part 5: More Q & A

[I’m pretty sure I’ve beaten this horse into the ground. However, if you’ve got a question of any sort, just put it in comments. I’ve been testing the hell out of my SpotX and am glad to share.]

It doesn’t even look like a cell phone. (Link goes to Amazon, you know the rest.)

Are there alternatives to the SpotX? Are the alternatives better?

Yes, there are several two-way satellite communication options on the market. Some are pretty neat. That’s a good question you just asked.

The SpotX and its competitors are probably starting an arm’s race. Two-way satellite communication for regular schlubs on a hunting trip is still in its infancy but soon it’ll be as common as GPS. Probably it will leapfrog or overlap with regular cell phones in many markets. Why not?

But that’s the future and I’m concerned with right now. Currently the SpotX’s main competition are old (very crude by comparison) EPIRB devices, satphones (which are spendy), and a new crop of Bluetooth antennae gadgets that link to a smartphone.

The antennae devices are where the action’s at. They link with a special App on the smartphone creating an indirect but certainly usable link to satellite constellations. They’re very cool, very small, and quite James Bond-ish. I hate ‘em but that’s just me.

Occasionally, antennae devices are mixed in with the hardware and abilities of a GPS. Garmin has something like that. It’s a neat idea to mix SAR beacon and GPS navigation. I might spring for one but the GPS/Sat-antennae devices are a solid $100 – $150 more than a SpotX and you wind up babysitting a damn phone. For $100 savings I can use a regular GPS (always carry a compass too). Also, the care and feeding of a smartphone is a hassle I don’t want.

The cell phone angle has drawbacks that nobody cares about (but me) and it has advantages that don’t impress me but astound others. The smartphone is most of the GUI and does most of the work. They have sexy features like weather reports and data plans and you can probably satellite uplink dick picks to Tinder if you try hard enough. I see all that and recoil. I sense many points of failure. But that’s me. My strategy is caution and reliability and that makes me a geezer who wants to ramble about solo and live forever. Who am I to hold out against Millennials who urgently need to post on Snapchat? For many people, especially young ones, the smartphone app is a more natural interface.

Pricewise, Bluetooth/smartphone pairing is more expensive than the SpotX; both for hardware and for service. Most people spend more on their smart phone & data plans than I can stomach so that’s not an issue to them. I suspect smartphone linked devices will be the majority of the market over the next 5 years or so. A dedicated device that does everything on its own, like the SpotX, is (in my opinion) more reliable but it may get BetaMaxed. (Which doesn’t mean I care. Nothing electronic you buy in 2019 will be “modern” in 2029 so why sweat what 2029 people will use.)

Personally, I wouldn’t touch a cell phone app-based system with a ten-foot pole. Daily use shit (a cell phone) and emergency use shit (your satellite communicator) shouldn’t be mixed together. The SpotX is an odd duck in that it’s all in one. It’s a single housing with the display, keyboard, antenna, battery, electronics, software, etc… I like that because it insulates me from emergency gear shutting down to do an OS upgrade or because iTunes wants to sell me some bullshit or because Zuckerberg is having a bad hair day.

My logic is to prefer the SpotX because it’s smarter than an EPIRB but too crude to play Angry Birds. Better to do what it does very well than do irrelevant shit that doesn’t matter. YMMV.

What’s the price for the SpotX?

About $250. Shop around but it’s pretty price stable. It’s only been around since last fall so it might drop a little with time? I don’t imagine it’ll drop too far in price. Buying hardware doesn’t include buying the service.

What’s with the SpotX keyboard?

In some reviews people freak out over the SpotX’s keyboard. It’s basically a Blackberry. Fuck them. Touchscreens freeze, break, and get inadvertently jostled in a backpack. The Blackberry approach was the right choice… for the intended purpose.

Warning, it is small. You will need to squint at the screen and type with your thumbs. Google up a photo of someone texting on a Blackberry someday. It worked and humanity endured.

Does it have spell check?

No. It’s a goddamn emergency two way satellite communicator. If you can’t spell properly for 140 characters you don’t deserve to be rescued.

What’s a SPOT?

There’s at thing called a SPOT. That’s the device that pre-dates the SpotX (which hasn’t even been on the market a full year). SPOT uses the same satellites and SAR (search and rescue) network but it’s not two way. You can send pre-designated message and that’s it. It’s inflexible but much cheaper. It’s still a damned fine tracker/beacon and might save your ass for a bargain basement price. When the SpotX came out, the price for a SPOT fell through the floor. You might consider one if that’s how you roll.

What is the price for the service?

Scott Adams once wrote that cell phone companies had only one thing to sell, minutes. So, they came up with complex pricing plans as a “confuseoply”. Price comparing two-way satellite coms is the same. It’s an apples to oranges clusterfuck.  For the SpotX you pre-pay for so many messages and I think you can send additional ones if needed. Some SpotX plans have it “always active” and others let you shut it down (and save) months at a time. You cannot use a SpotX without paying for the nerds that man the satellite & SAR end of things. It’s not a HAM radio.

There are a range of plan options and it’s not cheap but not too expensive. Figure a base price of $164/year to have it live all the time every day and totally usable. Figure a minimum of $40/year to have it live one month (elk hunt? rafting trip?) and dead the other 11 months but you can activate for another month for another $15 supposedly without much hassle. Beyond that you can easily double your expenses signing up for bells and whistles.

There are other two-way satellite com and satellite phone companies and plans. The plan is the bigger expense of the emergency communicator costs. The best I can say is that I chose SpotX.

Does it have GPS?

It has to have location information so it can send your location to people. It also has simple navigation to and from waypoints.

In practice, the GPS is slow to pick up a signal if it has been off or in a fast moving vehicle. It seems fine if you’re hiking. I think it’s good practice to set a waypoint when you leave your truck or whatever but the SpotX is not a great navigation device.

I have a GPS that works great as a GPS. It’s the size and weight of two golf balls. Call me crazy but separate redundant gadgets seems a good solution.

Also, carry a map and compass. Always.

What’s the battery life?

It varies. It’s not as long as I’d like but it’s not too short either. I can see how a little practice teaches the user to max the battery life to a much better level.

When I flog the SpotX mercilessly (which is how I test emergency stuff) it starts to go dead or near dead in three days. But it still sent and received and might have had a fourth day left. Three days was underwhelming but in retrospect that’s 72 consecutive hours of GPS and sending its location (“tracking”) every so many minutes. Also I messed with it a lot.

Now that I’ve got the hang of it and quit abusing the poor device, I can get much more time. Figure a week without breaking a sweat and two weeks with abundant care. Also you could leave it off for many weeks and probably it’ll hold a charge.

Here’s where you need to break cell phone type bad habits. For example, why the hell was I leaving an emergency tracker on when I was asleep in the tent? I posted my location when I got there. I’m still there. Why burn batteries when I’m snoring? Bad thinking!

It’s got an off button. Once I started using it, I doubled the battery life. Duh!

It charges with regular USB. It comes with an AC charger but I use an adapter with my truck cigarette lighter.

How do I use it in an emergency?

There’s an obvious button hidden behind a special door on the front of the device. Open the door and press the “save my ass” button.

Once you’ve done that, you will get instant attention from an SAR operator who will probably start texting you questions about the nature of your emergency. They’ll alert the Marines or send out an ambulance or whatever from their end.

I have no doubt that the SAR services are top notch. Possibly even better than calling 911 if you’re not in a standard house… though I don’t know that.

For obvious reasons don’t fiddle with that button!