Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This device sounded great, the perfect answer for what I was looking for. I was going to be on an 11-day trip through the Adirondacks and I wanted to send daily check-ins to my wife to make sure she knows I'm doing OK. Let's start with the two claims I have seen online & in manual - up to 20 days battery life with "power saving mode" - which I can only assume is either (1) logging at the max of 4 hour intervals or (2) simply being turned on, because there is no such setting. Perfect! Reality: Day 1 - it uses around 25% of the battery life logging (at 4 hour intervals) the first 7 or so hours. The conditions, like many hikes, is through a forest. I understand that results may vary in imperfect conditions, but the battery drain is just ridiculous. So I disabled bluetooth and track logging, and instead opted to turn the device on/off as needed. I've had check-ins take 20+ minutes and use 10-20% of the battery in areas where there is some opening in the canopy (along rivers, streams). Now I could carry a 1-lb battery pack to keep it alive, but that defeats the point of the mini version? I had to charge it a few times throughout the hike, thankfully I brought a power pack as a backup. GPS & Messaging: Many check-ins were delayed for two reasons. One: GPS would not lock. Two: Satellite comms were unreliable/slow/whatever. I attached a photo where I'm sitting on the beach of a lake on a clear day, and the Garmin took something like 20 minutes to do the check-in! I don't always have that kind of time, especially in hard-to-find wide open areas. What really is confusing to me is how a device from Garmin can take 5+ minutes to get the GPS coordinates, even in less-than-ideal conditions. They're supposed to be the GPS experts. And this is a safety critical function! Maybe I have a dud device, the antenna is improperly connected, or the firmware version is buggy. Either way, I'm thoroughly disappointed and have to return it. The plan is not cheap, so I'm not going to waste any more time/money on the service experimenting with it further. I'll reconsider once reviews show that's it's reliable enough to be my safety device. But as it is, I just cannot trust it, especially for solo excursions deep into the woods. I came across two hikers that had much better success. One used the full size InReach, and did not share the same issues. The other hiker used a SPOT with success (which admittedly has different level of capability - however, one-way check ins with confirmation is all I really needed, so it is a viable option). If you do purchase it, I hope your experience is better than mine. Especially if you need to use that SOS button. I will say on the plus side, the integration with the phone is very good. It is missing a key element however, the ability to visually see on the phone app that it is "synced" with the InReach. IIRC, it looked the same whether or not the device was actually connected.