About 20 years ago, smartphones were not yet ubiquitous, and in-dash nav was an uncommon option. Some of us were printing directions from MapQuest.com and reading them off like rally notes to make our way through unfamiliar cities. This created a brief boom for iPhone-sized portable GPS units, which ended as smartphones made their way into everyone’s pockets. However, there’s still a place for dedicated GPS units today, as long as they’re good enough to survive—off-road.
Today, Garmin announced the Tread 2—an updated version of the brand’s portable off-road GPS tablet, which, yes, is still a thing that exists. Portable GPS may be obsolete in the context of college or family road trips, but with enough features and foul-weather resistance, this type of device can be a great adventure enabler.
Tread 2 will ship in a few different configurations; there’s a smaller Powersports one and several huge Baja racing models. The newly announced versions are the Overland and SxS models, with suction cups for truck-cab mounting or a clamp for roll-cage mounting, respectively. It’s quite a bit bigger than the original Tread, with an 8.0-inch screen instead of 5.5, and stronger. Tread 2 features an IP67 protection rating (water and dustproof), whereas the old one had an IPX7 rating (waterproof only).
It’s a lot more advanced than the playing card-sized Garmins and TomToms rich kids were getting as graduation gifts circa 2004. You can sync it with the Tread app to notate and download routes, help you route-plan based on weather and vehicle specs, work as a short-range communicator between vehicles, and even track your dogs if they’re wearing Garmin collars.
But it’s also a pretty big investment—Garmin’s listing the Tread 2 Overland and SxS models at $999.99.
I’d need to spend some time with this thing to tell you whether or not it’s worth it, but conceptually speaking, I still really like the idea of a dedicated and durable GPS for off-road adventure purposes.
The first reason is convenience. When I’m out wheeling, I like to use my phone primarily for taking pictures of my dog and scenic vistas. If it’s occupied with mapping duty, grabbing it and switching apps is annoying. Or, if I’m really treating myself, I like to stick my phone in a Pelican case, seal it up, and not think about my notifications at all until I’m off the trail.
Then there’s the durability factor. My iPhone has survived many drops and falls with the OEM wireless charging case, but if it spends a whole Baja trip on the dashboard of my truck, it’s going to get sandblasted with dust and cooked in the sun. There’s a reason few, if any, Baja racers use iPads for mapping purposes—normal tablets and smartphones tend to overheat on a multi-day trip in rough elements. And forget strapping my phone to my Polaris Ranger’s roll bar, the thing would get soaked in mud immediately.
Finally, there’s the issue of reception. You can download offline maps, especially if you’re using a good cartography app like onX Off-Road, but there’s still the possibility you’ll forget, you’ll go somewhere you didn’t download, or you’re like me and your phone simply can’t fit the data because it’s chockablock with dog pics.
Dedicated GPS units definitely have a more limited use case than they did at the turn of the millennium. It’d be nuts to buy one of these just to drive on roads that Google has already mapped. But for serious backcountry use, the value proposition of something like the Tread 2 is still pretty strong.
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