Spot Gen3
SPOT Gen3 gives you a critical, life-saving line of communication when you travel beyond the boundaries of cell Service. The latest generation of award-winning SPOT devices, SPOT Gen3 lets family and friends know you’re okay, or if the worst should happen, will send emergency responders your GPS location – all with the push of a button. Add this rugged, pocket-sized device to your essential gear and stay connected wherever you roam. Long live adventure. Service agreement required.
- S. O. S. – in an emergency, send an S. O. S. With your GPS location to geos, who facilitates search and rescue
- Check in – let contacts know where you are and that you’re okay with a pre-programmed message
- Help/spot S. O. V. – request help from your friends and family at your GPS location. OR, ask for help from professional assistance organizations
- Custom message – let contacts know where you are by sending a pre-programmed message with your GPS location
- Track – automatically send and save your location and allow contacts to track your progress using google maps
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fb –
I’ve had a spot tracker first gen in the past, and it worked perfectly fine for my needs. I recently decided to get a Spot 3 for kayaking. It is supposedly IPX7 rated (ie, should survive 30mn at up to 1m underwater). I took it out for a paddle this weekend put it in my life jacket’s chest pocket. Battery compartment and USB were sealed and double checked. I spent about 10mn in the water with it during the day, swimming on the surface. At the end of the day, it wouldn’t turn on. Opened the battery compartment to check and there were a few drops of water in there which I assume killed the device.Called Spot today, and apparently water damage is not covered under the warranty. Kind of lame for a device that claims a waterproof rating.
Don Law –
Be very careful as I made a BIG mistake buying this. I did a months trip from the USA to Everest Base camp and return and thought this would be great for my wife to track me. I did not realize that the tracking link I sent her only shows 264 logs of 5 minute intervals, not what I expected and totally useless for a long trip. On my home page it can only show one page at a time so I cant print out my whole route. An experience of a lifetime with no record now. It only saves for a month and then deletes the information, pretty useless in this day and age. I was told by a very helpful customer service lady that you have to keep resetting it to save the information, good advise had that been CLEAR in the instructions but no good now. Further the waterproof plug for the usb port kept falling out and now its lost, BAD DESIGN. This cost over $300 with the activation and I asked that due to the disappointing service whether they would prorate a cancelled registration fee as it just did not do what was expected. Spot would not refund any of the activation, POOR POOR customer service. Feel free to send me a personal contact for more information. If you do purchase it please please do your homework as I would hate for others to make the same mistake as I.
Bubba –
Overall, it appears to be a good device although I have frankly never needed to use it. What bothers me is that they automatically renew your annual contract without any notice. I called them when I saw a $258.94 charge on my credit card. Since I knew that the basic service is $149.99 a year, I called and found that I also had the extreme tracking option (which I no longer need), the replacement option, (which I no longer need), and some other charge for a service that I did not want. I asked that those features be removed and was told that they do not offer refunds. I looked at my email to see if they had notified me that my contract was renewing and found that they had not. In addition, when I requested that they not renew those features next year, and I was told that I needed to call within 30 days of my renewal date. Very disappointing.
Sarah Spine –
Simple to use and does the job. I was suspicious that it may not have acquired satellite lock because the GPS light was just flashing but I guess this is just being frugal with the power because it worked just fine when I checked my messages and traces on-line.This is an excellent way to send “I’ve arrived at…” messages and the recipient gets the coordinates and a link to a map and to google earth showing the location. Great for keeping people informed when you’ve got no phone signal like in most of Snowdonia, Skye, the Scottish Highlands, the Lakes etc. which are my usual haunts. The tracking works well too and I’ve left it on the default 10-minute log which is fine. The tracks can be exported to .gpx and other file formats for use on Memory Map or whatever you use and this tracking seems far more reliable than the Memory Map software which adds spurious waypoints when it acquires a new Wi-Fi connection (maybe from a nearby walker’s hot-spot) and, importantly, it means I can keep my phone switched off and out of the way. Those tracks and messages can also be shared on Facebook and twitter if that’s your thing.Not had to use the “call out Thunderbirds” button nor the “It’s not critical but is there anyone nearby who can help me out?” button, and I hope I never need to, but knowing the other functions work well gives me confidence that I can rely on this Personal Locator Beacon if I ever had an emergency. It could be especially useful that you can call out mountain rescue without having to split the team to send for help in an area with no phone signal.However, I justified getting this, not just for the emergency situations which is its prime purpose, but because it had useful functions like the messaging and tracking which I find useful for regular hikes and expeditions. That will be really good to let people at home track progress when I go to Everest Base Camp next spring. No international calls, no updates via dodgy internet but real-time tracking and pre-loaded messages. Just the job.
Hsiekbert –
This was a mistake. I hate it. Last year I bought it for my son and daughter Inlaw as they were preparing for a walk on the Appalachian trail. I thought it would be easy to track them. It did not auto update location very well and of course extra money was needed for the tracking features. Nothing intuit about the software or application. You have to use a credit card to activate the SPOT. They automatically billed my credit card after a year. Almost $200 with no warning. Obviously they were unable to reimburse that.
Scott Hines –
Very unhappy with my Spot Gen3. First, the price listed on Amazon is less than 1/2 of what you really have to pay. They don’t make it clear that to use the device you have to sign up for a $199/yr subscription account. (more than I paid for the device) Secondly, this is one of the most difficult devices to configure and setup that I have ever encountered. (And I am professional software engineer with a degree in computer science) Then after 2 hours of wrestling my way through the setup, the device doesn’t work. It won’t synch and communicate with the GPS network. I’ve tried numerous attempts to get it to connect, and I get nothing. I’ve tried contacting the manufacture and received no response. I’ve tried contacting the retailer/seller of the device and they have say they have no expertise on the device “they just sell them”. Don’t waste your valuable time and hard earned money on this device. Its a rip off. IMHO
Tia Leber –
DONT BUY THIS PRODUCT! I echo all the other negative comments about the automatic renewal policy and crummy customer service. We bought this device when we took a job working internationally. It stopped working the 3rd or 4th time I used it and it got put on the shelf. Then we got burned for $215, first noticed when the charge showed up on my credit card bill. I missed the email notification which requires you to opt-out rather than opt-in for the renewal. Customer service, only reachable by phone during “normal business hours” (a chore, since I live 10 time zones away in a country that blocks SKYPE) was of no help, offering me a $100 discount off my next renewal. So far it has cost me about $120 per text message.An identical device, purchased for our daughter for her travels in South America and Asia last year, also stopped working after a month or so, and is also sitting on the shelf. As she is a single young women travelling in a lot of out of the way places, we would have loved for her to have a functioning device. But SPOT let us down there as well.Spend your money with a company that cares about it’s customers.
Adrian Moore –
As the title alludes to, this device is not tracking me correctly, and that on open ground on Dartmoor, with device strapped to back of rucksac.I am currently emailing Spot for a refund on whats left of my subscription.Even when it does work, it takes an age to track / send message.UPDATE:Spots customer service is almost non existent, they often do not respond to emails, and the phone number they tell you to use to cancel a subscription does not work, its always engaged, i’ve tried for 2 days straight at every hour of the day ( even though its meant to be a 24hr line ) … Utterly useless, im now in contact with my credit card provider to recover the subscription and i will avoid this company, gone back to Garmin whilst more in cost, is a whole lot better to deal with! even 1star for the service ive been provided with is too much!
MR SAMUEL B KIDD –
Private pilot – who does long trips – not only is this great for personal piece of mind for if we get in to trouble to get help in addition to our standard practices – but also gives friends and family the ability to keep track of us – and know when we are leaving and arrived safely.Perfect!
Katy S –
I like the size and light weight of the product and the principle behind it i.e. ability to summon assistance when there is no phone signal. I was aware of the subscription prior to purchase, however some people may not – it’s a sizeable annual sum. I was sorry to find out that some of the features only work in Canada and USA (I’m in the UK). The online and CD user guides are OK but certain aspects of the device don’t appear to be covered. I’ve taken mine out twice when cycling and the device appears to have switched itself off when supposedly in use. I may need to contact customer service to get someone to explain how it works. I’m not the most ‘techy’ person so someone else may find it a doddle.
Charlie Hampton –
Bought product for long distance hike in Turkey. Unit worked perfectly for 5 Days. After fifth day power and gps led started flashing red. Customer service told me unit was faulty. They sent me an online warranty form to complete. The submit button on online form pace does not work.
JulianMaurice –
There isn’t a whole lot of choice when it comes to this product. It’s either this or Garmin as far as I’m concerned. This is cheaper and it does the exact same thing.Oh and this has old school LED lights so in the dark it just looks awesome!Ultimately you hope that you’ll never need to press ‘SOS’ but for just telling the people who love you ‘I’m Okay’ this does the job perfectly.
Graham IoM –
Think VERY carefully before deciding to purchase one of these devices, especially if you live outside the USA.I purchased one of these for my wife to cover our need to track each other whilst doing separate wilderness adventures in New Zealand: I was doing multi-day bikepacking in areas devoid of phone coverage whilst she was doing hiking. As my activities were more frequent and risky than hers, I used a Garmin InReack Mini – and that (and the online mapping and earthmate app, worked fualtlessly and we were very impressed with this throughout.However, the function of the Spot equivalents were frankly useless:1. It is very fussy about being carried at the right angle etc on the body to get satellite coverage.2. There’s no meaningful battery state indication so you never really know how long it’s going to last.3. Having to remove the batteries and charge them externally is a right pain and is also very fiddly. They don’t draw much attention to this fact. You will have to carry spare AAA batteries and a suitable charging unit.4. The online mapping (i.e. using this to find where the trackee is located) is not much use, unless you are tracking someone doing a simple point to point route – as you can’t easily see their current location, just a series of footprint markers.5. The Spot App is similarly unhelpful and sluggish. Plus it just kept on crashing. Frustrating and ineffective.6. If all you want to do is have a very basic tracking for emergencies, it just might be some use, but otherwise, you really should get a Garmin InReach instead, which, used with Earthmate. really does provide easy and reliable tracking plus 2-way SMS/email communication so that you can communicate effectively anywhere.7. On return home, I decided to cancel the subscription and flog this in e-bay at the earliest opportunity.8. BUT they don’t support easy cancellation of the subscription! Guess what – you have to PHONE them (an expensive phone call to the US) to initiate the cancellation, plus you have to give 30 days notice, so will have to pay for another month (that’s assuming you have opted for the monthly plan) that will be wasted, AND their phone line is only open on weekdays, during working time and on CST. Good luck with actually getting through to an operator! Why do they not have an online cancellation option? Pretty obvious really – they don’t want you to be able to cancel easily.Thoroughly disgusted with the product, app and service.