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  • i-gotU GPS Tracker – Summary Review

i-gotU GPS Tracker – Summary Review

Posted on March 20, 2008 By Tom 8 Comments on i-gotU GPS Tracker – Summary Review
Gear, Geocaching and Maps, Photography

UPDATE: This review was for the i-GotU GT-100. Mobile Action has contacted me and asked if I would try out the new GT-120. I’ve tested it, and posted the new results here. So far it’s worked much better than the GT-100 reviewed here, which has now been discontinued by Mobile Action. I’m leaving this review in place for archival purposes.

One word review – don’t.

Don’t buy this piece of junk. If it wasn’t already apparent from my comparison with the Garmin eTrex Legend, then let me say it again – the i-gotU GPS tracker is totally useless for geotagging.

I decided to conduct one more experiment. I turned on both GPS units about 30 minutes before I had to leave for work and set them on the dash of my car. This gave them a half-hour to lock onto satellites. The skies were clear this morning, so there shouldn’t have been any weather-related obstructions. On my drive in, I had my camera set up in interval mode as with the other experiments. The Garmin locked on quickly and maintained a lock. The i-gotU appeared to have locked on when I started out, but while driving the blue LED never blinked to indicate that it was maintaining a satellite lock.

The results were about what you would expect. The Garmin tagged the photos at neat intervals along the map, exactly as they were taken. The i-gotU found a location for only one of the 51 images – the first one taken in my driveway while it still had a satellite lock. The rest had no location information recorded.

As a final nail in the coffin of the i-gotU, I made one more discovery. The bundled software doesn’t actually geotag the image. It only matches up the image with the latitude and longitude in its own database, but doesn’t write anything to EXIF. There is an export wizard with an upload function that connects to Flickr. However, the geotag information isn’t uploaded to Flickr with the image. In short, it is totally useless as a geotagging program unless you are just going to view your photos within the confines of that program. The one redeeming feature is the ability to export the GPS track as a GPX file so that you can use a REAL geotagger such as Geosetter. However, that only works IF you get a decent GPS track, which I haven’t so far.

I don’t think I’ve ever come across a piece of equipment that performs so poorly. I think I’ll be sending this thing back as soon as I can.

UPDATE: This review was for the i-GotU GT-100. Mobile Action has contacted me and asked if I would try out the new GT-120. I’ve test it it, and posted the new results here.

[tags]i-gotU, GPS data tracker, review, geotagging, photograph[/tags]

Tags: geotagging GPS GPS data tracker i-gotU photograph Photography review

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8 thoughts on “i-gotU GPS Tracker – Summary Review”

  1. klh says:
    March 21, 2008 at 8:23 am

    For the record, we got a Garmin for Christmas, and it actually has some of those same performance issues. We have waited for thirty minutes on beautiful days many times for it to detect the satellite, and it is sometimes off with regard to the precise location.

    Reply
  2. Geoff Fox says:
    April 27, 2008 at 4:36 pm

    I have also been using the i-gotu. My experience has been pretty positive, especially considering the cost.

    I lent it to a co-worker who spent the weekend snowmobiling (often over 80 mph). The unit tracked his progress perfectly, from his jacket pocket.

    Here is a track from a bike ride I took today. I only wish it was easier to calculate my distance traveled.

    http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=http:%2F%2Fwww.geofffox.com%2Fgps%2Fgf.kml&ie=UTF8&ll=41.437322,-72.905617&spn=0.035133,0.09407&t=p&z=14

    Geoff Fox

    Reply
  3. Ray says:
    July 18, 2008 at 2:46 am

    Re: i-GotU, the best thing since sliced bread, easy to use and as accurate as my Navman. Quickly locks on to satellite Will be using it for my travels.

    Reply
  4. ZinY says:
    December 1, 2008 at 2:00 am

    May I know whether you are talking about i-gotU USB GPS Travel Logger GT-120 or i-gotU Bluetooth GPS Travel Logger GT-200?
    And, how about GT-100? Is it an older model?

    Reply
  5. ian says:
    April 21, 2009 at 6:32 pm

    i got the i-gotu 100 and it is absolutely rubbish … i have used in on and off for several months in hope of it working. I just use it to track my daily 2 hour walk across common land and even with clear skys and holding the thing out it still only logs a few points …

    i contacted mobile action by email (actually several times) and have not even had a response … crap product … crap company .. if i could find the receipt i would take it back to maplins

    Reply
  6. Lodaive says:
    May 14, 2009 at 10:23 pm

    It seems you guys don’t know this product very well. Let’s see how Julie in the-gadgeteer.com says about i-gotU. http://the-gadgeteer.com/2009/03/19/i-gotu-usb-gps-travel-logger-gt-120-review/

    Reply
    1. Tom says:
      May 15, 2009 at 5:58 am

      Lodaive – If you’ll notice, this product review was about the i-gotU GT-100, not the GT-120 as reviewed by Gadgeteer. The unit I had functioned EXACTLY as I described it.

      From Julie’s description, it looks like Mobile Action has made some significant improvements with the GT-120, especially with the software that comes with the unit. I plan to do a new review with the GT-120 in the near future, and we will see how the improvements really stack up.

      Reply
  7. Peter in Tampa, FL says:
    August 7, 2010 at 8:51 am

    I used this product to track my cheating wife in the act. IT WORKS!! I was able to see her every movement, every stop and how long she was there. Using Google maps I was able to determine where she and her boyfriend met at a parking lot, ate lunch, parked for a quickie and then dropped him off at his car again. Not pleasant news. But if you need to know. This is the device for you! She was floored when I confronted her with my knowledge of where she had been and when she had been there. And I have never told her about the IGotU unit in her car HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

    Reply

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