Thursday, March 5, 2009

Zoombak Fails to Perform

I’ve been doing some research lately on a GPS tracking device called the Zoombak. At first sight I thought this device seemed pretty neat. But with further investigation I found quite a bit of disappointments. The price of the device ranges from $100.00 to $200.00 depending on where you’re buying it from. First thing that I noticed is that when you get your Zoombak before you even use it you must charge it for 24 hours. Not very convenient considering other products on the market only need a 5 to 6 hour charge in order to use. When you do get the device charged if you plan on continuous tracking that’s almost out of the question. They only do a 5min update for an hour which can take up to 4 hours for you to get the information. Not to mention your battery life will only last about 12 hours on a 5min continuous update. In order to use the device you have to set up an account with Zoombak on their website where you will be asked to provide a credit card for a service plan. This is typical for a real time device because you need to send the data through cells. Zoombak uses T-Mobile as a Cell provider which in my opinion is one of the worst for coverage area. Here’s the link to their coverage map, seems like there’s a lot of holes in it to me http://www.zoombak.com/coverage/.%20 Who knows if you’re going to get signal for your device. There price is pretty reasonable $14.99 per month but hopefully you’re going to need it for a year cause to get out of the contract it will cost you a $100.00 cancelation fee. There’s also a 60 day activation period meaning if you don’t activate your device with in that amount of time I would assume that you’re out of luck, or they’re going to charge you an outrageous activation fee. I guess one of my big questions would be. What about my one year contract that I make with T-mobile, are my prices going to go up after that first year? To answer my own question I would think yes. I am however happy to tell you that the Zoombac dose have alert settings. If you’re not familiar with an alert setting this is a setting in which you can set up a geofence to alert you through a text message or email if the device leaves or enters an area. Unfortunately it takes 15 to 20 min for you to get the alert. Parents who think this is a way to catch your kid speeding think aging the Zoombak doesn’t track speed. A couple of other things I found I didn’t particularly like about the Zoombak are. It doesn’t give any written reports, it only has an accuracy of six to eight feet, and the last and most upsetting down fall is, they out source there Tech support and most of them read from a scripted trouble shooting list. Sure it’s 24/7 but that doesn’t mean anything to me if I can’t understand someone when I’m frustrated with a problem. All in all I would say this GPS tracking device fails to do what most people need in a Tracker.

For more Information on GPS Devices please contact a Sales Representative at http://www.bluewatersecurityprofessionals.com/