What is a GPS Logger
Ever wanted to be able to put your last trip accurately on a map? Maybe to know how far you have travelled and exactly which roads were used and the altitude? This is where a GPS logger comes in. I bought the Mobile Action i-gotU GT-120 about eighteen months ago and have used it on a couple of long trips. It is very small and very light. It hold loads of location points. On a five week trip to New Zealand I set it to log every minute. I started every time I left in the morning and switched it off each time I arrived at my destination eight or ten hours later (We were cycling). On arrival back at home I downloaded all the data and found that it had only used 20% of the available memory. Not bad.
Features
As I said it is truly tiny and very light. You hardly notice that you have it with you. It is pretty water resistant. We went through some really heavy storms and it never missed a beat, unlike my bike computer that decided to cease to function and had to be dried out for a couple of days to coax it back to life but I had lost all my trip data.
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| Size compared to an Australian 20c piece |
It comes with a software suite that is not too bad. I have since used some of the software importing .GPX files from my phone and it works just fine. My preferred program is Sports Analyser as it is able to give you plots of time versus altitude, speed, distance and every other combination you can think of. Such a small unit does have its limitations. It only has Windows drivers and must be downloaded with a Windows PC.
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| Sports Analyser showing a leg of a cycling trip in the South Island of New Zealand |
These days I prefer to travel with a tablet rather than a laptop so I want to be able to pull the files from the USB or possibly bluetooth and process them with an app on the tablet, or phone for that matter. There is no provision to look at it through the USB port and pull files off separately. Also the accuracy is pretty average. I have compared it with a friends logger and his tracks are far smoother. Your really only notice this when you are zoomed right into the map and you can see the track jumping about on either side of the road. When you down load the data you will also see some points that are way out compared to the rest of the track. This may be to do with the detection of the signal if it is not on the outside of your clothing or in a saddle bag. I suppose the poor little antenna is minute.
That said, the ability to geotag your photos, as long as your camera's clock is synchronised, is great and works well.
Likes:
Tiny and no extra weight to carry
Water resistant
Simple to operate
Geotag photos
Software reasonably good
Quick to charge, about 1 hour
Dislikes:
Will not work with Android
Average accuracy (possibly due to size or location of the unit)
Conclusion
Overall this logger is very functional and, if you are a hiker worried about weight, easy to carry. If you travel with a PC I can certainly recommend it. If you travel with an Android tablet and want to use that for daily uploads this is probably not the one for you. I don't really want to use the phone GPS as it sucks the battery dry too quickly, and you really want your phone for emergencies not logging your trip. Over the coming months I will be searching for one that will work with Android. If anyone has a recommendation please feel free to comment with your suggestion
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