I post a comparison of tracks from a SPOT device, iPhone GAIA and Inreach MINI here:
https://caltopo.com/m/J7GA
My conclusions:
-the best tracks are from GAIA (red), but perhaps if I set the MINI at the more aggressive 1 sec interval rather than 5 minutes, they would be even more similar
-the MINI tracks (orange) are very good, with no serious dropouts, and would assist in a rescue with very great accuracy
-the SPOT tracks (blue)vare rudimentary; not so great for turn by turn viewing, but pretty close for rescue. I sometimes experience large dropouts with the SPOT, particularly in valleys, but on this trip the SPOT was pretty good
-the SPOT share page has always been clunky and unrewarding, with just points generated on a bad map, not tracks
-the MINI share page has tracks and gives a lot more terrain information
-the altitude profiles for all three are very similar
-I am really liking the MINI
-the MINI used about 25% battery for each 8-10 day. It appears to have 40 hours of capacity rather than the 50 advertised, at the somewhat default settings. But perhaps if I had enabled "Extended Tracking", it would be more like the 50 hours as advertised.
BTW, I camped at least 200 ft from Shadow Lake, at a spot that was clearly the go-to used campsite. There was a sign displaying allowed campsites posted at the north end of lake, which I did not see as I came from the south. Two women nearby did camp at the famous lakeside site, and avoided conversation with us because they did not want to engage the campsite topic. There was a wooden plaque nailed to a tree right where they camped that said "no camping".
spot stats.png
mini stats.png
GAIA stats.png