Anyone have one? DeLorme InReach™ SE Satellite Communicator

[Romulus1297]

The spot satellite phone does work if you want to talk to your kids most of the time

[BDildine]

Been looking at getting one of these, (leaning towards explorer rather than se), the wife would be a lot less stressed out while i'm on solo day trips out of range while she's home 4 months preggo, but i wish they werent quite so much coin. Anyone got one for sale? lol

[coop2424]

I have the inreach se for the last two years and really like it.. I got it off eBay for $150 and have had no issues.. Worked well this last weekend to let family know that bull was down and would be getting home later than planned..  It does take a little time to send texts and receive them but if you plan on that it isn't a issue..

[summertime blues]

I have one.  It is great for piece of mind.  Did chinook to white pass in 1 day a few weeks ago and wife was able to watch me to pick me up at white pass.  Most of my back country stuff is solo so the wife likes it. Hopefully I never have to test the sos feature

[fc2038]

I have one as well. I have used it the last two years in Oregons wilderness. It is easy to use and messages are sent rather quickly depending on cover. I use it nightly to send messages and communicate with the kids. After the initial perches it is a yearly 19 dollars a year to keep the unit live. You can activate it monthly when needed. For me I use it about 2 months a year, depending on how long I am gone or where I am hunting/hiking I chose a plan that will fit my needs. This last trip I paid the 59 bucks for the unlimited texting and split it between 3 guys in camp. Everyone was able to communicate with their families. I recommend it. My only wish is a touch screen for faster typing. But it is light and works well!

[dwils233]

Does you have a link to the rebate offer?

[BDildine]

Does you have a link to the rebate offer?

Didn't know there was one....everyone is pretty much same cost across board, never seen one on sale/rebate

[summertime blues]

I also thought it is kind of rudimentary old school texting method and figure now that I have one a touch screen version will be coming out soon with my luck. .. that said it is still awesome to be able to text from deep in the back country to say all is well

[206hunter]

i've got the previous generation where you use the delorme gps unit to pair with the satellite communicator. the gps does the texting and the satellite communicator sends/receives. worked great for me. only issue is w/ the gps which ocassionally has trouble turning on. I'll just take out the batts and put in new ones or just keep trying and it always works. alot has been written about this issue online. the good news is that you don't need the gps if you're gonna send the sos because that function is built into the satellite communitcator. amazing i was able to send messages in nasty canyons...although that might take 30 min. make an offer if you're inclined. i could offer a return policy if ya like considering it probably doesn't sound like the most enticing set up. always worked for me and gave me great peace of mind. could buy a 200 personal locator beacon to back it up. the gps pn 60 has topos loaded on for WA and OR so it's pretty sweet setup

[Bushcraft]

I have the new version with their unlimited texting plan.  Their Earthmate app works seamlessly with my iPhone.  GPS. Maps. Weather. Waypoints. Tracking. Routes. Navigation. Texting. SOS.  Also, the internal rechargeable battery lasts a surprisingly long time even when using it hard.

Game changer.

[dwils233]

I was in Cabelas this weekend and the manager and I were talking about the DeLorme. Apparently they were recently acquired by garmin but it appears they will keep the brands separate. Sounds like if you can hold out for a year or two we might get a Delorme with garmin-grade gps functionality built in. 

[Boss .300 winmag]

DON'T OWN ONE, BUT AT WORK I'M TRACKING SOMEONE WITH ON, AND COMMUNICATING WITH THEM THRU EMAIL. IT WORKS WONDERFUL NO PROBLEMS AT ALL. SPOT ON THE OTHER HAND IS GARBAGE, LOTS OF FAKE TRANSMISSIONS SENT OUT BY THEM, CAUSING FALSE SEARCHES ETC.

[BDildine]

DON'T OWN ONE, BUT AT WORK I'M TRACKING SOMEONE WITH ON, AND COMMUNICATING WITH THEM THRU EMAIL. IT WORKS WONDERFUL NO PROBLEMS AT ALL. SPOT ON THE OTHER HAND IS GARBAGE, LOTS OF FAKE TRANSMISSIONS SENT OUT BY THEM, CAUSING FALSE SEARCHES ETC.

Thanks! At this point I'm pretty sold on the Delorme, just need to save a few pennies and maybe there will be a sale or a good used one

[luvmystang67]

Okay, here's a review from 4.5 days elk hunting.

What I expected:
We have some texting walkie talkies that we use to strategize when hunting.  I'll text something like "give me a few cow calls" or "come around up top and push downhill" and its critical that these texts get sent quickly, but typing takes a while.  Limitations of our current product are that you have to type old-school text message style where you hit each button up to 4 times to get the letter you want.  Also, you have no confirmation that the message sent or that the other party received them.  The range is similar to a regular TalkAbout style radio and they don't work well over hills and in other areas.  Also, the place we hunt has no cell service.  We carry SPOT devices in case of emergency or to let people know where we decided to camp.  We thought the InReach would take the place of all of these devices, allowing us to coordinate hunts, send locations, and keep in touch with loved ones.

Reality:
The InReach pairs with your iPhone or other smartphone through bluetooth.  You dont have to do this, but it improves functionality.  The app allows you to text quickly, which is great.  The app also has maps that you can download and cache, so you can use it for messaging and navigation.  Really it works pretty well in that regard.  On paper it should do everything we wanted but the reality was a little different.  Here are some notes below that were kind of surprising to us, or if not surprising, kind of some downfalls.

1. The unit performed best when outside the pack, so we had to clip them to the exterior of our backpacks and keep them paired to the phones from there.  We teathered them down.
2. At least on iPhone, the bluetooth connectivity was kind of inconsistent.  Basically when i connected it was fine, but as soon as I put my phone away (like sleep mode) it would basically sleep the bluetooth as well.  This meant that my phone would not alert me when I had new messages and unless I turned sound on the inReach, I'd have no idea that I received a new message.  When the phone was reactivated it would sometimes show disconnected and have to reconnect and refresh the connection.  Sometimes it'd sit idly for a while until I turned bluetooth off and back on again on the phone.  So I received messages to my phone whenever I remembered to check it, even if I set the delorme refresh rate to "Continuous".
3. Messages take a while to send.  Basically with bluetooth it transmits the message you want to send to your delorme, where it gets sent from.  The delorme is the weak link here.  It can take up to 10 minutes to send your message out and seems to have a difficult time doing so if you're moving (maybe it is continuously updating your location and doesn't know which location to send... dunno).  This proved particularly problematic in a car... messages wouldn't send even if you had a clear view of the sky but were moving.
4. Messages seem to take a while to receive when sending from one delorme to another.  In some cases up to 2 hours, but most were 10 min or so.  This kind of killed our ability to use them as strategic tools for hunting as the delay ended up being too long.  It was great to coordinate meet-up spots or whatever, but too tough to use if you're making a strategy on a bugling bull.
5. If you want people with cell phones to be able to text you, you MUST text them first so that they have a phone number to reply to.  They cannot just cold text you.  They might be able to use your delorme e-mail address (your_account@inreach.delorme.com), which is how you e-mail from one device to another in the field, but its much easier if you text them first so they have a randomly assigned phone number to respond to.
6. Setting up everything online ahead of time is a pretty big pain.  You need to set messages online in advance.  Choose sending options (like do you want to send your position with every text) has to be done online and then your device needs to be updated.. sometimes on the USB of your computer and sometimes (like with change of service) it needs to be updated via satellite.

Some cool Pros:
1. Messages to cell phones seem to send very quickly compared to messages from inreach to inreach

2. You can text a friend in another canyon and even share your location.  When you text a message to another inreach device, the message send location is recorded on your map (different color for you and your friend) so you can see where the message sent from and even see where yours sent from.

3. The map functionality is pretty good and might replace your existing cache type app, which allows you messaging at the same time.

4. Battery life was pretty decent.  I had it set on continuous updates and use all day.  At the end of the day I'd be at 45%.  If you turned down the refresh rate I'm sure it'd be much better

5. The independent screen is pretty nice in case you drop your phone in water or your phone battery dies or basically if your phone craps out on you, the inreach is still functional even thought the UI is severely dated.

I hope this helps people.

[RatRodMike]

Tagging along.