Reviews for Garmin Explore™

Everything was OK until I realize it was constantly trying to sync with my Garmin Pro 550 Plus draining battery and heating up. Looked at Garmin support for how to turn off. Found instructions only to discover the new version of app didn't have that option. Tried turning off nearby devices thinking I'll just do that when needed and now app not working even after turning permission back on. Guess I won't have the gps tracking I needed. What a waste of money, should have bought another brand.

I like Garmin devices but their services and app strategy is becoming straight garbage. You need three or more apps depending on the GPS / messaging devices you are using. The paid map features aren't even consistent even across higher end GPS devices. Once the cell phone companies turn on the satellite coverage, this all dies a quick death.

I use this app with an inReach Mini 2 that is typically off. The app constantly runs a sync service in the background at all times that never completes no matter how long it has been since the last use. This means it always leaves an un-dismisaable notification on the phone. Force-killing the app only makes the notification go away briefly before it comes back even with restricted battery usage. I guess I'm uninstalling it since that's the only way to get rid of the notification.

This app is utterly worthless. It doesn't allow you to send tracks to your watch. This is the only thing this app needs to do and it fails horribly. Even if it allowed this feature, the app has always failed to sync with the watches at all. Garmin should be ashamed by their inexcusable failure to make software that does the only thing it needs to be able to do: send tracks to your watch. Garmin, are you guys listening? You are totally inept and I will not be buying one of your products again.

The app is definitely better at making routes and tracks (what's the difference anyway??) Than Garmin connect but does not allow to show the heat map. Why does Garmin have two apps where 1) shows the information but is bad at making routes (e.g. does not allow you to plan off track or go against a one way (that's Garmin connect) and 2) does not show the same information as Garmin connect (not the same map options, no heat map (that's Garmin explore)). Solution: integrate in app into the other!

It lets you manage collections of waypoints, courses (routes), etc and sync them to your devices. That part is straightforward. What's confusing is how notifications pushed to your device (e.g. fenix 7) are handled when you have more than one of Garmin Connect, Garmin Explore, or Garmin Golf installed on your phone. The only way I could get consistent behavior was to manually configure all three apps to be the same.

The other day I was out of cell service, I turn on my inReach to send a text and... the app won't load without cell service because Garmin pushed an update to the app. Terrible user experience for something that's designed to be used offline to not work offline. It should always work without cell service. If you need authentication, make it authenticate from the inReach it's normally connected to. I have been using this for a couple of years and this was the biggest fail yet.

Been using the Garmin Instinct and Solar version for some time and have had no issues with the app until now. Since the update, it won't auto-download any of the maps. I've downloaded a few maps manually for offline use and it won't show the topo map in the main map for that area even after manually downloading it. As soon as you fix it I'll change my rating. *** Edit for those who have this issue. Clear the cache and data on the app. Sign back in and allow permissions. All fixed***

Route creation great! Device support terrible. I have 8 Garmin devices....only 1 is supported. I purchased a new Zumo XT for my motorcycle and while setting it up it tells me to download Explore....so I do. Then Explore says "device not supported." To the developers....please release cool stuff like this only once you can properly support the device line. We need this to work with everything else. Once it does...5 stars. Guess I have to plug my GPS into a computer 1990s style for now.

Horrible documentation (non-existent?) and not at all intuitive. It took me forever to figure out that you can't sync ROUTES to Instinct. They have to be TRACKS. Even if you have a collection selected for sync under Devices on the explore.garmin site, you have to select that collection in this app and tell it to sync. Click on the device icon in this app, go to collection manager, and select what collections to sync. Syncing for inReach much more straightforward. Layer selections suck...The end.