Review: GTrek GPS Tracking Device – Helping to Retrace Your Steps

Overview

The GTrek is a GPS tracking device that allows you to upload your daily travels onto Google Earth and lets you show off to your friends and family any potential ‘beauty’ spots you may have found whilst on your adventures. As well as this, it’s great for getting yourself out of trouble with the missus if you need to convince her that you did actually take the dog for a walk and you weren’t just stood outside the house having a fag for 20 minutes whilst the dog looked at you all forlorn. You can find a previous post on it here.

But is it any good? Well, I got my hands on one of these devices and ran it through its paces to see if it is worse than the village idiot at remembering. Read on to find out…

Review

From face value I was very surprised about the size of the device as unlike the clunky large ones which oil or haulage truckers have used in the past, the GTrek is a slick device fitting neatly into my pocket with enough room to spare for my wallet and keys.

The set up was very easy and with the help of the clear instructions provided it took me less than two minutes to get the battery in, seal it up and I was away. However, it did take a while to locate a GPS signal and I did get a bit bedazzled with the flashing lights, but a quick glance at the instruction manual and it all became clear to me in a whizz.

What I thought would be fun and a perfect excuse to test out the device was to take it on my driving lesson. My partner is always asking me where I have been and what routes I took but all I can ever remember is that there were a lot of fields, sheep, old ladies etc, which you can imagine often annoys her.

So to help me alleviate my bad memory and test out the device whilst on my driving lesson, I switched the GTrek on and waited 5 minutes for a signal to be registered and away I went without a second thought. My driving instructor did think it was a tad strange of me to be using this, perhaps he thought I was making sure I was getting my whole £20 ($40) worth but after I explained it to him he was fine with it and was asking me a load of questions about the device.

So when I got home it was then time for me to set this route up on Google Earth, and I can tell you that it was definitely a different experience to when I had to first set up the device. At first it was very straight forward; I used the supplier CD that came with the device in which I installed all the drivers and software that I needed to get it connected up to my PC as well as a mains to get the data from the device.

I was then stuck, “What do I do now?” was the first question that came to my mind and it seemed that the manual offered no help after this point. I played around with the software and came up with the solution that I was missing the Google Earth software, which it seems does not come with the software bundled with this device, so I quickly downloaded it from the internet and lo and behold I got my GPS route to show.

As you can see I covered a lot of ground on my driving lesson and the device does a wonderful job of showing the route I took on a £D Google earth Map, be it all a little bit wonky here and there, but to be honest that’s probably my driving.

The Gaj-It verdict

Design: 8/10
Usability: 8/10
Features: 7/10
Value: 8/10

We Say

All in all this device offers exactly what it says, it is great for remembering those trips you never want to forget. The only minor qualm I have with this device is that the instruction manual could of been a bit more in-depth and covered more areas than just the general set-up of this device but other than that it should make a great gift. Check this video out of the 3D google earth maps on the Gtrek site Here.