Somebody at another forum asked for a bigger review after I had some time with my
Garmin Astro so I'm copying it to here as well.
(full disclosure - I am a total gaper with a GPS, I did not pay full pop and I'm still figuring all the stuff out on the thing)
Background for those that don't know - The astro is a GPS handheld that links to a smaller unit that you stick on your dog and it then keeps track of where the dog is and to some extent what the dog is up to (more on this later). I believe that every 5 seconds it updates the dog's position and that while the dog unit is talking to the handheld via some kind of line of sight radio signal, it also communicates directly with GPS satellites for it's positioning (eg: position determined by sat, not by proximity).
Review:
Yes, this is a little bit gratuitous technology and yes, people have had dogs for thousands of years without this technology. But, it makes keeping track of my relatively well behaved and frequently checking in hunting dog a breeze and when we take my wife's dog out for a walk he gets to wear the thing b/c he's not quite so good at the whole deal and gets into the "nose zone" and occasionally ends up a few hundred yards off in the forest. With the astro, this is a zero stress situation.
For hunting grouse, which I do a fair amount of this is really nice. It alerts when the dog is on point (stationary through 2 of the 5 sec cycles) and it could theoretically tell you if a hound had tree'd game (I believe there's a leveling indicator and if you used the harness it'd tell that and/or if the dog sits). It's pretty sweet if you don't see right where the dog is and hear the beep to know to start looking for em on point.
With a range of 5 miles (give or take, it is line of sight), if you have a really big runner or a dog prone to bolting this would be some magic piece of mind.
I love being able to mark the truck and coveys when I'm out in the mountains.
Loading maps onto the thing was not so intuitive but once I figured it out I was fine.
But there's some niggling things about it also -
The dog unit only comes in blaze orange, I'd like a black or camo skin for the thing.
The harness that comes with it is a PITA, attaching it to a collar is much more effective (it's set up to do so)
The antenna sticks up a ways on the dog unit but doesn’t seem to bother the dogs, just me.
The dog unit, even when counter weighted with an e-collar moves off center.
The handheld stores a ton of old tracks for the handheld but so far I've only got it to hold the most recent for the dog unit (not necessary just kind of lame)
Garmin's topo software is…uh…er…yeahhhhhhh…not the best (50' intervals? No forest cover? Lame)
The handheld chews up AA batteries and I wish the thing was setup (like the dog unit is) to be rechargeable.
Linear Mode
