Lazy Daze Owners' Group

Thanks for the info, Ron. Garmin offers a number of plans, either paid monthly (good for vacationers who only need coverage for a couple of months) or annually (less expensive for full-timers). For what it's worth, I chose the "Consumer Safety" annual plan, which costs $11.95 a month plus a $29.95 initial setup fee. This is what I got:

Unlimited SOS
10 text messages/month (freeform messages sent from the InReach, or from a smartphone linked to it)
Unlimited preset messages ("canned" messages such as "Checking in--I'm fine" or "I'll be late"; these can be customized on the Garmin website)
Tracking points: $0.10 USD for each point (you can have these displayed on a map on Garmin's website, so that friends can follow your progress)
Plus weather forecasts, GPS location, compass (that doesn't require you to be moving, unlike a GPS compass), "trackback" to let you retrace your steps, etc.

I also signed up for a $29.95/year medevac plan--I forget the details, but it pays up to $50,000 per incident. Helicopter evacuations can be very expensive, so this seemed worthwhile.

I should point out that there's a wide range of these devices. At the $200 price point, there are devices such as Zoleo or Bivy Stick that have no display, so anything beyond SOS requires pairing with a smartphone. And at $500-$800, there are larger devices that have a color screen, built-in topographic maps, and other features that make them more useful and easier to use than the InReach Mini 2.

I chose the Mini 2 as the best compromise for me: it can be used standalone, so even if my iPhone is broken or lost, I can still read and send messages, get weather forecasts, see GPS coordinates, use a compass, etc. If not paired with a phone, sending messages other than predefined ones is quite awkward, since you have to choose a letter at a time from a scrolling list... but it can be done. If, for example, I were to send an SOS, I could then communicate with rescuers to let them know my situation. On the other hand, I expect that in most cases I would be pairing it with my iPhone, so I'd have the advantage of a large color screen without paying for a second one on the InReach.

It's all a matter of how you plan to use the device. If you think you'll always have a working smartphone on you, then one of the "faceless" devices such as Bivy Stick would cost half as much (although the service fees would be the same). If you want topo maps on a color screen in a standalone unit, then something like Garmin's inReach Explorer+ might be more to your liking. For me, the InReach Mini 2 hit the sweet spot.

But there's also the original Mini, which is missing a few features but costs $50 less. Here's a Garmin comparison page. The original Mini might be all you need.