Originally Posted By: Bobby49
Originally Posted By: psykokid
So far I've found the inreach tracks better than the spot. One rudimentary test I did was to have both devices sitting on opposite sides of my dash and logging as we drove from crater lake to my inlaws place in paradise. There were a bunch of gaps in the spot track, like no pings for 40 min when set to 10 min pings. The inreach clocked a location ping every 10 min without fail.


I understand your experiment. It would be better if you repeat it, but this time reverse the units from right to left sides.

I've used various GPS receivers in cars for about twenty years now, and I've discovered all sorts of little things about GPS reception that you never would have imagined.


The issue here has little to do with GPS, but rather the communication satellites that the two systems use. InReach uses the Iridium Satellites, while Spot uses Globalstar. The Iridium is generally considered to be better, although I am sure others may disagree. In your example the spot was unable to contact a satellite, while the InReach was. Most likely the GPS coordinates would have been similar (provided they sampled at the same time).