i-gotU Data Logger First Impressions

Price: £60

Weight:  20gm

Features: Waterproof, shock resistant casing, Memory for 64,000 entries - 30 hours at reasonable refresh rate, 230 mAh lithium battery. Compatible with Google Earth and maps, Import/Export and blogging software included. Ultra light data logger or emergency GPS backup.

  Lightweight, tiny data logger for recording your trips and uploading

  Only recharges via USB cable, easy to accidentally turn off 

i-gotU 120 Data Logger

One of the best things about owning a GPS is being able to record where you go and share it with others. It's not the main purpose of the usual GPS, but it's a pretty much standard feature even with phone based GPS. If you ask GPS users how they use their devices there's a fair proportion who just turn them on, throw them in their packs and leave them there till they get back unless they need to double check their map reading. The i-gotU is designed to fill this gap, and take over the route recording without trying to replace map and compass.

The first thing you notice about the i-gotU is the size, it's a minute 44.5 x 28.5 x 13 mm and weighs in at just 20gm including the non slip cover. You also get a USB cable and a mini-CD, the CD holds all the drivers and software for the data logger and the USB cable works as a combined charger and data transfer cable. You'll need to charge it first, which takes 4 hours first time and 2 hours subsequently, but once you've installed the drivers and software it's easy to get going with it. To turn it on simply press the large button on the front - the only botton you'll find on the device, for about one and a half seconds and a blue light will start flashing to signify it's turned on. Once you've got a flashing red light you've got a satellite lock and you're ready to start.

i-gotU maps

The i-gotU comes with @trip PC Pro, a software application for downloading and naming your saved routes. By default you can download to Google Maps and Google Earth as well as save as a .GPX file for use with other digital mapping software. @trip also lets you integrate photos, which can be geotagged with the GPS data, into Google Earth files . File transfer is fairly straight forward and there's enough capacity to store 30 hours of data if you set the sampling rate at once evrey 15 seconds.

Provisional Verdict

For those who are quite happy with map and compass but wouldn't mind a full record of where they've been this is the ideal weekend device. At 20gm and less than twice the size of an SD card it can slip unnoticed into the pack and happily sit there working away quietly. 30 hours at 15 second intervals is plenty for a weekend, but having an inbuilt lithium battery makes extended use problematic unless you've got USB based charging. You have to be careful where you put it once turned on as anything pressing the large front mounted button for a second and a half will turn it off again, but put it in a pocket facing outwards and it does exactly what it says on the box. We've yet to test the phot tagging and emergency use as a back up GPS receiver but on first impressions it looks like a great little data logger for the price - and it's water and shock resistant too!