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Monday 22 April 2013

An addendum to my iPhone Walkmeter App vs Satmap Active 10 Review

It crossed my mind once I'd posted the Walkmeter vs Satmap Active 10 review that I had omitted something which was quite crucial. It is with reference to the Satmap Active 10, the Walkmeter review I feel is fair and true to the best of my knowledge.

The Satmap Active 10 however is inaccurate as an out of the box unit. Unfortunately at the outset I found the battery life to be substandard and was only really of use to record/log routes as any attempt to use it as a navigation tool drained the batteries like the fury. Obviously it was great to record certain routes in the wilderness as running on satellite the Satmap Active 10 was never out of service however the Walkmeter did suffer from this being reliant on it's mobile phone carrier signal.
The cure was to buy the rechargeable battery for the Satmap Active 10 which makes it an awesome piece of kit and can thunder on all day long on a lengthy one day hike.

4 comments:

AlanR said...

I couldn’t agree more. But now i always check out any ultimate lithium batteries i take, as i have found them well below the 1.5volts. Quite a few i have had recently only get a reading of 1.2 volts. Considering the price i feel cheated.
As for the Satmap rechargeable battery. You can buy this same battery off the web, very cheap. But it only has the wires attached and not satmap connector. Considering the price of the similar connectors, satmap are certainly stinging the customer on RRP when you consider what they will pay for a bulk supply. I don’t think they should charge any more than £15 for this battery. Thats plenty.

CF Rich said...

Hi Alan,
Is that before you've used them? That is a bit like robbery... Yeah I bought the Satmap rechargable battery a while ago and I recall it wasn't cheap, compared to the Satmap itself though it was far cheaper. And without it the life of the unit is limited, it died on me a few times during a lengthy day - not much use. If there is a cheaper alternative that works though that is a winning solution.

AlanR said...

Yes that was straight out of the packet.

I need to look into the connectors business with somebody who knows them better than me but certainly the batteries are out there. For example you can get bulk at less than 3 US dollars each.
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/808346698/3_7v_2700mah_li_polymer_battery.html

That was just a quick google find, right now. With a bit more searching individual sourcing will be under £10 i would suggest.

CF Rich said...

That is bad that they've depleted so much without any use.

I'd be really intrigued to hear how you go with this, hopefully it will be a perfect substitute for the branded version, albeit at a fraction of the price as the Satmap ones are a bit of a ripoff.

I do recall though buying imitation batteries for my DSLR a while ago and ended up binning them as unfortunately they weren't a patch on the Canon ones.

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