Should you invest in the Garmin inReach Mini 3 Plus for your backcountry trips, where you might lose cell phone signal or will your cell phone do the job?
If you enjoy a trip into the wilderness where you might lose cell phone service, there are options to ensure you can communicate with emergency services. It can be easy to get lost or injured in the wilderness, but if you have a satellite communicator, you have a much better chance of being found and rescued than if you only take your smartphone, which might lose signal in areas that cell phone towers don’t cover. The latest model from Garmin could be exactly what you need.
The Garmin in-Reach Mini 3 Plus satellite communicator for hiking is a great choice
The latest inReach just got a color touchscreen and better messaging. Here’s what actually matters for backcountry trips, and whether your smartphone can handle the job instead. While your smartphone might be able to handle the job in some cases, if you don’t have service coverage in the area, you’ll be glad to have one of the backcountry safety devices that can still deliver emergency GPS messenger functionality in remote areas.
The Mini 3 Plus is a huge improvement over the Mini 2
When you need outdoor satellite texting capabilities, the Garmin inReach Mini 3 Plus is the right item for you. It’s small enough to be a great choice in hiking communication gear and is the leading model as a wilderness SOS device. The cost is about $100 more than the Mini 2, but it has much better functionality to ensure you can reach emergency services and provide them with a detailed description of your location.
The Mini 3 Plus features a color display with touchscreen capabilities, voice messaging, longer text messages, and the ability to send and receive photos. Using the Mini 2 to send messages was a lengthy process because you had to scroll through the alphabet to find each letter. The use of a touchscreen and voice messaging makes things much easier with the Mini 3 Plus. Of course, sending a 30-second voice message could be even easier than trying to send a text message using the new 1,600-character limit.
Don’t scare the wildlife
If you’re using the Mini 3 Plus and want to send a message but don’t want to scare away the wildlife, your voice recordings can be transcribed and read, ensuring you have more silence. Messages that you receive can be handled this way, giving you the quietness and stillness desired when you see an animal that you’d rather watch than scare away.
The Garmin inReach Mini 3 Plus doesn’t have a camera, but it can send and receive photos
Your smartphone is the ideal accessory to the Mini 3 Plus, but things could get a little confusing. The Garmin device doesn’t have a camera, but it can send and receive photos while paired with your smartphone using the Garmin Messenger app. Of course, this means you need to have a cell or Wi-Fi signal for your smartphone, which means sending and receiving images is limited and might be better handled with your smartphone. Maybe when Garmin creates the Mini 4, they will include a camera, but for now, this is how you can send and receive images on this device.
Your location is shared and updated regularly
The battery life of this latest Garmin device is 350 hours when using it to share your current location every 10 minutes, or up to 95 hours when it is in “performance messaging mode,” which allows you to communicate with emergency services using the device. That means you can continually send your location to shared services for several days, which is useful when hiking in unknown locations or by yourself.
A cheaper version with fewer features
If you don’t need all the bells and whistles of the Garmin inReach Mini 3 Plus, you can buy one that doesn’t have Plus in the name for about $50 less. This model doesn’t have voice messaging, transcriptions, or photo sharing. It still has a color touchscreen and text messaging capabilities, making it useful for reaching out for help when in the wilderness.
The Garmin inReach Mini 3 Plus is the latest satellite communicator for wilderness lovers who spend a lot of time outside cell signal areas. Is this the item you need before you head out for your next wilderness adventure?