This is a pic of the 3rd generation Spot, you really don't need anything more advanced than the first generation. Don't get me wrong, I love Garmin Inreach with all its functions but in my gut I know I don't need one, just want one.
https://avalanchesafety.ca/product/...QQyOLpCcEzECC04eWmRDWJk2HPxkun1BoCqPkQAvD_BwE
I was a Captain in the Canadian Army reserves working with teens. For 7 summers, I spent two months just slight outside Whitehorse Yukon working in operations for a cadet adventure program. This program took them all over the Yukon in some very isolated areas.
We started using Sat phones, but if you have used them a lot in isolated areas, you know they can be a pain in the butt, and sometimes don't work that well. Teens would go out with adults in "platoons" and we would issue them first generation Spots. We then downloaded a map of the yukon and with their Spots on a signal was generated every ten minutes letting us know in operations just where they were.
Twice groups got lost and we were able to contact them before either of them even knew they were lost to let them know the correct route, this info from Spot and watching their course on the Yukon map.
Sometimes we monitored up to 8 groups, often one hundred miles or more from each other, knowing where they were, where they took breaks, and an ability to roughly estimate when they would arrive at their destination.
One time a teenage guy broke his femur and was in great pain in the middle of nowhere. The Spot emergency signal was activated, I received a call from I believe Texas notifying us of a problem, they then called the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) informing them of the crisis.
We at first tried to get a helicopter in but none were available, a busy time of the year for them. Fortunately this kid who was in distress, was beside a river so an Otter was flown in landing on the river, picked up the kid and took him to the hospital in Whitehorse.
If you want the best get Garmin Inreach, but you really don't need the best to send out an emergency signal, have someone be able to track you, and the ability to send out signals to let them know everything is fine, and to phone you if you need non-emergency assistance.
As you can guess, from my experience in the Yukon, I purchased a first generation Spot in something like 2007 which I still have. I've tried to rationalize why a Garmin would be better (and they are) but I know my Spot really provides all the services I need. It really is an emergency devise and worked much better than early Epirbs. The early Epirbs were terrible. There was only 7 satellites, 4 of them Russian, they covered a too wide an area and reaction times were slow. Russia would have to contact someone in the States, etc., etc. The newer ones offering GPS location assistance are much better. But Spots are just as accurate and have been involved in many rescues to date.
One of the first early marine rescues occurred off of Australia when a sailboater got into trouble. Another well known early Spot rescue occurred in the Canadian high North involving a Canadian military aircraft, someone in the downed aircraft had brought one along to be used outside of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.