Thread: Garmin InReach Mini vs Spot Gen 4

I have a mini and its not particularly user friendly. Maybe I'm getting old but even using it via the phone App I find it a time consuming exercise to sent a message and to read incoming texts. On the plus side that difficulty stops you from sending heaps of expensive messages I guess.

I find it somewhat confusing to know exactly what you will or won't get chaged for too... and worse, Garmin just put up their Annual Fee to $64. I wrote them an email asking them to reconsider that increase as it seems pretty unjustified to push through a 60% increase in their annual fees when nowhere in the developed world is anyone seeing a 60% increase in their service fees. CPI increases are in single digits... so what marketing muppet thinks a 60% increase can go without kickback?

Naturally I got a polite response telling me their costs had increased and they wanted to provide a quality service, blah, blah, blah... but of course they don't give a shit and I have no doubt they'll be hiking their fees again next year.

I'm really pleased I didn't go for a Garmin Chartplotter in the boat... I already had a bitch on for Garmin after installing a new transponder in a mates plane and finding out the bastards had changed their serial coms data to their own formate so now it doesn't talk to any of the other non-Garmin equipment in the panel. I've long been a Garmin fan but now... nah. Their arrogance is becoming unbearable.

As MSL stated above, it is good to get two way coms when you're a long way from civilisation so the mini does have that advantage. If you're going to use all the crumb trail features you might need to recharge it every 3 or 4 days so don't forget to take the charging cable.