Handheld GPS Reviews

Price:$44.54

Bushnell GPS BackTrack Personal Locator Product Reviews

Get to where you were, December 4, 2008

This item is great for both the backwoods and shopping mall. I got it for my wife to find her car when she exits the mall… Yes, some of the parking lots are huge! The day that we received it, we went to a new park and brought the Backtrack along. By the time we got to the field that our grandson was at, we couldn’t see the parking lot, and there were 4 of them.
When the game was over, I pressed the automobile icon and followed the direction that the Backtrack pointed us to. It led us to within a few feet of the car!
It works great and is easy to use.

Not Ready For Prime Time, September 14, 2008

The Bushnell Backtrack is an interesting concept. An idiot simple dirt cheap GPS intended to do only one thing… Get you back to your starting point. If you’re constantly losing your car in huge mall parking lots, then Bushnell thinks it has a solution. Simply set your Backtrack and go shopping. At the end of your day of mall bliss your Backtrack should lead you right back to your car. Does grandpa get lost on walks? The Backtrack hanging from his neck is designed to get him home. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work….

I’m a long time user of automotive GPS systems so out of curiosity I took a Backtrack device to the mall. Before I left my car I turned on the Backtrack and within five minutes it had located itself. To be fair it probably would have taken half that time outside my car but how many customers, especially seniors, will stand outside in the rain so their GPS can find satellites a bit faster? I set the location of my car by finding the car icon and holding the set button until it memorized the location, and then I went shopping.

While I was in the mall my Backtrack went into sleep mode. No big deal, and I just woke it up as I left the store and waited a couple of minutes for it to find satellites. GPS devices depend on movement to orient themselves, so if you turn on the Backtrack and don’t move it will know roughly where it`s at but will have no clue what direction you’re facing and the built in GPS “compass” will point pretty much at random. In this case it was in `find my car’ mode and it had no clue what direction to go so I started walking. It took about 100 feet of walking at a good clip for it to get its bearings and point vaguely in the general direction of my car. If course if you stop to get your bearing and turn to look around then it won’t know that it’s now pointing the wrong way. And if you’re moving too slow it might not even realize that it’s moving and will remain lost. So I walked another 100 feet at a good clip to get another bearing, etc, etc, etc. It only took about three times longer to reach my car than it would have with dead reckoning. Somebody less tech savvy might have made an afternoon of the search if they depended solely on the Backtrack.

What I don’t think the designers took into account are limitations of GPS technology, especially technology compatible with a $70 retail price. And the limitations of the people that will be looking to the Backtrack to find their car for them. At the technology end the processor and display are way too slow, and updates are so slow and jerky that I think many people will find themselves confused. The fact that you have to be moving at a good clip to help the Backtrack orient itself is also impractical especially for seniors. Grandma’s Hoveround had better have a turbo! Bushnell should have incorporated a digital magnetic compass to keep the device oriented while stopped. As it is it’s just going to confuse a big chunk of its target audience and leave them lost.

Where it may be useful is as a low cost way to help the older kids find their way back to a camp site, or help very tech savvy adults that are healthy enough to walk fast enough to keep the device oriented. But to do either of those it needs more complete directions. Such as directions explaining that you need to be moving and moving at a good clip.

As a side note the lanyard intended to keep it securely around grandma or grandpa’s neck broke the instant I tried to use it for the first time.

Bushnell Back-Track, January 4, 2009

The Back-Track does what it says, holds 3 waypoints, with 3 icons, a house, a car, and a star, so if you were on a hike you can set your car or the house icon as the base, and use the other two as waypoints, so it’s not bad for day hikes. The unit has two buttons a mark/backlight button, and an on-off/waypoint button. You turn on by holding down the on/off button, then tap the on-off button to cycle through the waypoints. To mark say the car, just hold the mark button down and it clears it and sets it to 0yds. Once you start walking it shows how far in yards and then miles you’ve walked and the arrow points back to where you started. It turns off automatically in 10 minutes if you don’t touch any buttons, and when you turn it back on, resumes where you left off so your waypoints stay intact until your reset them. It does seem to acquire fast with the sirf-star chipset, it’s accurate as long as you keep the unit horizontal. Once it’s vertical the arrow tends to point downward, so sometimes if it’s tilted in your hand the arrow will move off true north or not exactly at your car, but as you walk closer it’s dead on. The blue backlight isn’t that strong but is clearly visible at night. All in all, it does what it says. It does lead you back to your car, house, campground, and the built in compass could help you on a hike. A built in clock with gps time would have been nice, maybe next version? Well worth 50 bucks though.

Bushnell Backtrack—-thumbs up !, January 9, 2009

The Bushnell Backtrack is a must have for the hiker or hunter. Very simple to use and gets you back to your starting point very easily. Just mark it and forget it until needed. MUCH easier to use then the conventional GPS.

works great for hunting, November 9, 2008

i have been looking for something like this for years. i hunt rabbits with dogs in cedar swamps and it is very easy to get turned around when everything looks the same in this type of terrain. now i just punch in my wearabouts at the truck before i get in to the woods and presto it points me to my truck everytime ,no matter what,weather ,hills ,trees . i wouldn’t go hunting without it again now that i have one and so simple to use ,its just what us hunters needed .i have tryed to use the hand held gps like e-trex and this backtrack is so much nicer for what hunters need.standing still is not how it works properly , you have to walk with it so it can determine your direction.i see bad reviews about this product ,idiots. but people would bitch about being hung with a new rope too.thanks bushnell

About what you should expect, December 20, 2008

I just took my new Backtrack out for a trial run to hunt squirrels after an ice storm. I didn’t really expect to get anything but just had to play with my new toy. I marked my trucks location (I took my truck in case I got a big one) and headed off into the crystal forest. Just as I thought animals are smarter than humans and were holed up for the day but the ice coated trees were spectacular!!! After crunching around for about an hour I headed back to the truck (no squirrels) using the GPS as a guide rather than using known trails. Knowing where I was I questioned the pointer arrow but soon realized it was pointing me in the general direction of my truck. Following the average direction I came to within 15 yards of my truck. This GPS will not magically transport you to the exact footprints you were standing in when you marked your spot but it will get you very close to it. For the price and for a person like myself that has NO sense of direction I LIKE IT!!!

fun to have, some improvement required!, February 16, 2009

I got my backtrack a few days ago and I immediately wanted to put it to the test. I’m a gadget freak so I tested it in several parking lots and it took only about one minute to lock the satellite signal every time, I was pleased about that, I went to do some errands and it took me back to my car missing it for about 20 feet, 7 out of 10 times. I tested the compass when I was inside of a building and it kept pointing at the wrong direction, a different occasion I had a visual of the direction of my car through a window while I was in a building, and the backtrack was pointing me into the wrong direction, it corrected the direction as soon as I stepped out of the building. I was driving around and wanted it to direct me back home, it was giving me the right distance, but pointing in the wrong direction while driving. So in conclusion I can say that it works pretty good when you are outdoors, but if you are inside of a vehicle or indoors, is not very reliable. I like it anyway and it’s specially nice when you go hiking. It will get you back to the camp or to your car in the middle of the woods, but in a parking lot, it might miss it for a line of cars, that’s not nice when you have a cart full of groceries and you have to go around to the next lane of cars because the backtrack missed it for 20 or 30 feet. If you are in a mall and want the backtrack to point you the direction to exit the mall to get to your car, you might have to wait until you are out of the mall to redirect you to your car, finding out that a different mall exit was much closer to your car than the one that you took following the indications of the backtrack.

Pretty good for the money but beware of magnets, November 27, 2008

Great low price for a quasi-GPS. Yes, indoors it does take about a Minuit or even two to lock on to the satellite signal but faster outside with a view of the sky. One VERY important issue is that POINTER IS sensitive to magnets or large metal objects just like a hand held compass. The distance seems unaffected which is probably determined by satellite (I assume). So keep all large metal objects and especially magnets away from the thing while using it or the POINTER will point in the wrong direction. This is in any mode, both the compass and location modes. I alternated direction of a bar magnet about a foot away and it causes (only) the pointer to change wildly. Hunters watch your metal firearms. Just use it like any normal compass (hold away from large metal objects) and it will be fine. I like it very much.

It does exactly what real GPS technology does -, November 30, 2009

Real GPS technology is a large number of satellites 12,500 miles in orbit sending a very weak time signal for a computer processor to calculate the holders position in space. Most users don’t know or understand that the receiver is not getting blasted with 50,000 watts from their favorite rock station ten miles away, or even a cell signal two miles away. Interference from structures will stop the signal, period.

I recently purchased a Backtrack as an economical aid for deer hunting and travel cross country. At the price, Brunton and military compasses can’t and won’t do the same job without a geodesic map and literally days of training – training I’ve had repeatedly in 22 years in the US Army Reserve. Much of where I hunt has no decent map, and overhead satellite photography is remarkably low quality in these less densely populated areas. If there is any difficulty in the woods, the real issue isn’t which way is north, it’s the actual distance and heading from a known point.

For the price point, the Backtrack works fine. It does not have an extremely fast response time, but given reasonable patience, it will orient you to the compass and let you know what heading and distance you are from the start point. Reasonable is up to two minutes – which is all it needed the first startup. At that point I set the home icon with the extremely simple two button controls.

I tested the unit at distances of yards and miles, and found when handled properly like a compass – held parallel to the ground with no motion – it would show equal distances and complementary headings between two points. At about 700 yards it changes to tenths of a mile, and when between home and say, a parking point, you can measure the exact distance between – straight line.

When traversing rough terrain with a unscaled pictographic map, such as printed by the conservation department for most areas, it was simple to keep aware of our position on that map and get a basic idea of the scale involved. I felt more secure with the Backtrack telling me my car was 739 yards away at 356 degrees than trusting my memory of which way an old wooded ravine might go. Again, a compass would have only told me which way was north – something I checked using a Silva Ranger model I purchased while in the Infantry school. It can’t tell me a distance and heading to a known point unless I literally pace it out and recognize it on an accurately scaled map.

As for literally following the arrow, even a compass won’t help you make a better decision to avoid the rough patches and get on a trail heading in the general direction. The Backtrack can’t do your thinking for you.

Will a GPS show you your car’s location in a parking lot? Yes, and for the price, it should. But you will have to learn the menus, operation, and still set the start point where you parked it – raining or not. Just put it on the dashboard and wait. When you’re done, give it a minute, hold it flat, don’t wave it around, and use normal routes. Walking through walls is asking a bit much. The Backtrack will get you there – if you can remember what you drove. At that point, you might try your keyfob.

A must have!, July 19, 2009

Being a gadget nut, had to have this.Go dog walking and never get lost.Mark your spot on a beach where you have your gear set up to find after boating/swimming/touring.Mark your cruise ship dock spot when you land and go shopping and need to get back to continue the cruise.Going to some crazy night party? Mark it once arriving and if you lose something you can find the place next day to go back and get the item.Wish it had more marking spots, but 3 is still nice. Reasonable price a big plus.