Are you speaking from experience? Or, do you just perceive them to be inferior?
Please correct me if my understanding of SIM GPS trackers is wrong:
First, we have to babysit the SIM validity. If something doesn't auto-renew one month/year and we forget, we're out of luck.
Second, GPS SIM trackers are expensive. Trackimo is $140 for first year, and $60/year after that. For 2 years of Trackimo use, we can buy a Marco Polo and never have to pay another bill again.
Third, I live on the East Coast 10 miles outside a huge metro. And yet, if I crashed my quad in my cul-de-sac street, a tracker would be worthless because the whole cul-de-sac is a deadspot. There are tons of deadspots everywhere, particularly in less populated areas away from highways (where cell phone towers are). Even in heavily populated regions of the US, there are tons of deadspots for cell coverage. I used to live right in the center of Washington, DC, ~1 mile from US Capitol, and my house yard was a cell phone deadspot.
Lastly, a tiny GPS tracker may struggle if the crash is in the woods or near other obstructions in the same way my running, hiking, and driving GPS units sometimes struggle in certain conditions. Either it will lose GPS completely, or accuracy of the signal will degrade to a big search perimeter. Anyone who has crashed a quad in the woods knows how hard it can be to find even when we know where to look.
For at least these 4 reasons, I consider SIM GPS trackers inferior to RF trackers. Depending on where our quad crashes, we might have an easy or hard time picking up signal with an RF tracker. We might be doing a little or a lot of walking. But we will find it because the signal is there to be found. In contrast, a SIM GPS tracker has multiple failure points, as mentioned above. It might work perfectly, or it might not work at all.
I am not even mentioning things like 48-96h vs 3 months of battery operation, or 12gram vs 40 grams weight...
Please correct me if I am misunderstanding how SIM GPS trackers work. Perhaps the potential points of failure outlined above are mitigated in some way.
Also, I swear I don't work for Marco Polo!
The above is basically my thought process for deciding what I wanted to use as a recovery device in case of crash. I wanted a device I could trust. A Trackimo doesn't even work in my front yard. I decided on Loc8tor Plus because it has decent enough range.
