Originally Posted by
PatmanTN
Dan,
I'll offer this as more content for your "pros" column on the Garmin device (assuming the quality is the the same since Garmin purchased Delorme): I've owned a Delorme In Reach SE for somewhere around 8 or 9 years now. It's been the most reliable piece of electronics I've ever owned. Though just this year the screen has become dim and hard to see in daylight.... but I've used the heck out of this thing.
I use mine in a similar fashion as you describe: mostly for messaging. For the last decade or so I've been backpacking almost every weekend plus a few week long excursions as life allows and these add up to somewhere between 30 and 40 trips per year; so sometimes as many as 75 bag nights. My established protocol is to message my wife when I reach camp for the day and leave the unit on until she messages me back, then I turn it off. As such, I only charge the battery about once a month or so.
To date, it has never failed to deliver the message. Sometimes it can take a long time, as when I'm camped in a valley without much view of the sky. I think the longest I've ever waited for a message to send was around 4 hours and that was from the Citico creek valley while camped pretty far off-trail in the dense forest with a high surround and too tired to move to a more open place for better line of sight to the satellites in orbit.
If you decide get a smart phone, you can add the Earthmate app and use it without the dedicated GPS; it can use the GPS chip built in to most smart phones. A feature that I'm in love with is the ability to download map overlays to the base Earthmate "Topo North America" map. I love overlaying old USGS quads from the mid century and trying to find old trails and landmarks for off-trail exploration.