BEST TRAILRIDING GPS APPS
BEST TRAILRIDING GPS APPS
There are literally hundreds of hiking and camping navigation apps out there, but few are designed with off-roading in mind. Fortunately, however, there are a few low-cost or free smartphone apps made just for us. The best trailriding GPS apps allow you to view terrain, trails and roads, track your ride, mark waypoints, and even share the rides you have been doing with others. We have put together a list of great off-road apps that we have been using over the last couple of years. Some do certain things better than others so that you can review the features and spec charts we have made and decide which features are most important to you. Enjoy.
POLARIS RIDE COMMAND
Polaris Ride Command is definitely one of the best trailriding GPS apps and it’s one we are very familiar with. In fact, our account says we have tracked over 2,500 miles in 4 months. Ride Command is available as a complete display console on some RZR and General models, but using it on a smartphone means you can use it with any brand machine you ride. Within the app, Polaris has preloaded thousands of forest service, BLM, state and private ride areas all over the country. You can also import GPX files to Ride Command and ride trails Polaris doesn’t know about yet. You can track your ride and save it for later or send it to a friend to enjoy. Ride Command also allows you to create groups and track them up to 5 miles away as long as you have cell service. The rest of the features work while offline or even in airplane mode, so it’s not a battery eater. On the desktop version, you can create rides and send them to friends or link them to your car, smartphone or iPad.
Price: Free
Track friends: Yes
Track rides: Yes
Import/export rides: Yes (GPX)
Format: Apple/Android
Works in airplane mode: Yes
Contact: https://ridecommand.polaris.com/en-us/home
RELIVE
Relive is unique in that it will track your ride then replay your route on a satellite image. While you are watching the trip unfold, photos you have taken at each stop will pop up on the display. It’s a very cool recap of your day that you can share on social media or in person with your friends.
Price: Free, $6.99 monthly, $38.99 yearly
Track friends: No
Track rides: Yes
Import/export rides: No
Format: Apple & Android
Works in airplane mode: Yes
Contact: www.relive.cc/
UTV TRAILS
The UTV Trails smartphone app takes crowd-sourced trail GPS data and other trail information from a huge community of riders and makes it available to the rest of the community. Its one of the best trailriding GPS apps that keeps getting better. When riders use the smartphone app to record their rides, the ride is sent to the UTV Trails servers upon completion (or the next time you have internet service.) That recording is compared against all trails in the database, and any new sections create new trails in the database. This means as more and more riders record their rides, more and more trails appear on the map for you to see. If there aren’t many trails shown in your area, this simply means nobody has recorded them yet and you can be the first.
Price: Free or $14.99
Track friends: Yes
Track rides: Yes
Import/export rides: Yes
Format: Apple/Android
Works in airplane mode: Yes
Contact: www.utvtrails.com
REVER
With the basic app, you can track rides, create routes online, join communities, get turn-by-turn directions, share rides (email, text, social), track friends live, recommend rides and join fun challenges.
With a subscription, you get offline map caching, butler maps for the U.S. and Germany, and automated safety text alerts with GPS location to predefined lists when you start or end a ride. You can also create communities.
Price: Free or $2 per month option
Track friends: Yes
Share Rides: Yes (GPX)
Track rides: Yes
Format: Apple & Android
Works in airplane mode: Yes
Contact: https://rever.co/
GAIA GPS
The Gaia GPS smartphone app was built for back-country adventurers and professionals worldwide to plan, navigate and stay safer. You can plot trails and routes, and download all the information you need for an offline trip in the wild using a decent library of maps for around-the-world travel. Since this is more of a hikers’ app, it does not come with any preloaded off-road trails. You can’t track friends or let friends track you, but you can share with them the places you have been. What makes Gaia one of the best trailriding GPS apps is the ability to see speeds traveled, including max and average. The same goes for elevation gains. You can also geotag all of the photos you take within the app.
Price: $9.99
Track friends: No
Track rides: Yes
Import/export rides: Yes
Format: Apple/Android
Works in airplane mode: Yes
Contact: www.gaiagps.com
LEADNAV
With track recording, marker dropping and a great rout-builder tool, routes used in the LeadNav app can include audio waypoints, which provide street-style audio guidance while you are off the grid (“in 450 meters, rock on right, then turn left. In 100 feet, sharp right”). This is what makes LeadNav such a popular choice among ATV riders and single-seat off-road racers. LeadNav serves as their navigator while they keep their eyes on the road ahead. The base $20 app also provides several background map imagery options: Bing satellite and hybrid (street names), USGS satellite and topographic, and open street map.
LeadNav location tracking works across three different channels. Cell Connect allows any LeadNav user within cellular reception to broadcast his or her location, as well as receive the current locations of other LeadNav contacts.
For the ultimate in tracking, LeadNav can create a custom channel on its website where viewers from anywhere can track the progress of multiple vehicles at once using any home computer or mobile device.
Price: $20
Track friends: Yes
Track rides: Yes
Import/export rides: Yes
Format: Apple
Works in airplane mode: Yes
Contact: https://leadnavsystems.com
OWLSHEAD GP
Owlshead is the most complete collection of off-road trails in the state of California. With Owlshead, you can see trails you won’t find on other apps. The downside is this app is only for California, but the upside is, there are a lot of places to ride in the Golden State. It won’t track your previous course of travel, but you can see what trail you’re on and which trails are coming up. We have used the OwlsheadGPS.com site to export certain trails they list on their map and imported them to other GPS systems.
Price: $2.99
Track friends: No
Track rides: No
Import/export rides: Yes, Export
Format: Apple/Android
Works in airplane mode: Yes
Contact: www.owlsheadgps.com/owlshead
MOB ARMOR
Mob Armor got its start by manufacturing and selling mounts for GPS units. Mob Armor quickly realized how many systems were being used in the world and created its own app. Within the Mob Armor smartphone app, you can do the basics, such as tracking your ride, laying down waypoints and adding notes to them and saving trails. The app also tracks data from each ride, including top speed, elevation, etc. In Performance mode, you can install range rings that will alert you if a specific marker is coming up.
Price: $9.99
Track friends: No
Track rides: Yes
Import/export rides: Yes
Format: Apple
Works in airplane mode: Yes
Contact: http://mobarmor.com/
ONX OFF-ROAD
OnX Offroad, from the makers of the hunting app OnX, features more than 985 million acres of public land and 240,000+ miles of roads and trails, including open gates and width restrictions. OnX Offroad is a must-have app for any off-road enthusiast. Know before you go with the latest GPS satellite/topo trail-mapping app. Turn your phone into the best off-road mapping tool for finding open dirt roads and trails, tracking your favorite routes and making custom waypoints. The app works using your phone’s GPS when you’re off the grid and offline with full-detail satellite imagery, open trails and remote campsites. You can filter your own content, add photo waypoints and even find non-ethanol fuel stations.
Price: $29.99 per year for Premium and $99.99 per year for Elite
Track friends: No
Track rides: Yes
Import/export rides: Yes
Format: Apple/Android
Works in airplane mode: Yes
Contact: www.onxmaps.com
See UTV Action’s test of the amazing Yamaha Adventure Pro GPS here: https://utvactionmag.com/product-yamaha-adventure-pro-gps-system/
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