Although I love ACR to death, I see that there gunning hard for spot. Just as Doug had mentioned, a company like ACR must be hurting a little from spot sales to go after them. Instead of wasting money on advertisement to hurt spot, they need to come out with a more cost effective beacon with features like spot.

Spot on the other hand has an opportunity to go after the big dogs by making a more reliable product in difficult terrain and have a dual feature to allow you to use the same rescue satellites and frequency like ACR free and give the option of subscribing to there extra features and so forth. If Spot had the full features of the ACR (durable,Free,use in most terrains) and there replaceable AA batteries and extra optional services, they could put a hurt on ACR.


ACR Spot bash video


http://www.acrelectronics.com/

Features of a good beacon to name a few, add some more if you can think of.
1. Cost $200 or under
2. Small and compact with user replaceable common batteries, like AA's
3. Uses same 406MHz rescue frequency and 121.5 MHz (SAR homing frequency).
4. Internal GPS
5. Waterproof to 15 feet
6. Self test feature


_________________________
Failure is not an option!
USMC Jungle Environmental Survival Training PI 1985