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Low cost satellite communication

Looking for reliable low cost satellite communication for mountains. Looking at the Zoloft satellite text communicator. Does anyone have experience with this? Or another brand?

Looking for reliable low cost satellite communication for mountains. Looking at the Zoleo satellite text communicator. Does anyone have experience with this? Or another brand?

I have some experience with the In-reach, but not the Zoleo. But I've chatted with a fews guys that have used both. The Zoleo I'm told is cheaper, works as well as the In-reach and what I'm told much quicket. They said that the In -reach can take 30 minutes to get a response as the Zoleo only a few minutes. I would suggest you keep doing research on them both before deciding. Ed

I have Inreach Explorer + about 4 years now. I like it and its been very reliable. All 4 guys in my gang have one. I will not tell you we've never had messages that took 20-30 minutes to go through, but that is extremely rare. Most are couple minutes at the slowest. Excellent battery life, can serve as gps, its my back up not primary, and can be used standalone without a phone although that is not user friendly.

Not sure what you consider low cost. Unit is around $450 but I would not buy it till you see a sale. Cost me approx $100 per year. That is for annual subscription and activating for 1 month for western hunt. I activate with a plan that allows unlimited messages. I deactivate after the 1 month. I do not use it for any PA hunting. There was a price increase for this year, so my cost will go up little. Don't remember the exact changes.

I have no experience with the Zoleo or Inreach Mini.

The ones we were using was the mini. We even asked who we were texting to put a time stamp on the text right before they sent it so we would know how long it took. Because it was taking so long. We would text them and them about 30 minute later we would get a text back. So maybe it took 15 for ours to get to them and then 15 minutes for there's to get to us. Could it of been to area we where in, I don't know. I would go over to the Elk hunting forum and ask these question, Inreach Explore vs Inreach mini, vs Zoleo Asking question on costs and speed of texts to go out and come back and reliability of all 3. You will get a ton more info over there.

I'm actually going to follow this thread as I'm planning a DIY moose hunt in Alaska and this would be my main form of communication on this hunt. Ed

I've had the InReach Explorer for a couple years now and love it. Got it on sale for under $400 and I use the annual safety plan. I don;t send a lot of texts, but primarily have it for the safety factor. I use it anytime I am hiking, backpacking, hunting or fishing. It is my primary GPS now. I am in a lot of areas where cell service is sketchy, so it gives me piece of mind. Costs me the annual fee of $25 then like $15 per month. Well worth the money!

I have the in reach spot. It's very small and only allows satelite texting. I used it in Colorado two years ago to communicate with a hunting partner as we hunted 30 miles apart on the same National forrest land. You can just get the monthly plan when you go. I download offline maps to my cell phone and use it for GPS anyway through OnX I will be taking it to Wyoming this year for safety as this will be a solo elk hunt

My partner prefers the Zoleo. I use inreach. In reach has long battery life. Zoleo uses your phone. So limited to phone battery life and whatever backup batteries you want to take along... or solar charger... of truck usb... whatever you’d preference. The big inreach has a good enough gps screen for me so I don’t care to carry anything else.

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