YARMOUTH, Maine — (March 9, 2011) — The DeLorme Earthmate PN-60w with SPOT Satellite Communicator has been honored as a recipient of a 2011 Backpacker magazine Editors’ Choice Award. The most prestigious award in the outdoor industry, it is given annually to products in recognition of their outstanding innovation in design, materials, and/or performance.
The Earthmate PN-60w is a rugged, waterproof handheld GPS offering full navigation capabilities, plus the unique ability to create custom Type & Send text messages for delivery via the SPOT Satellite Communicator. Users can explore and stay connected with family, buddy lists, social network sites, and emergency responders, even when far beyond the reach of cell phone service.
The Backpacker Editors’ Choice Awards, presented annually since 1993, honor the products that Backpacker editors have chosen as the best of the year based on months of trail testing by teams of highly experienced hikers and climbers. With no set categories for the awards and no set number of recipients, the products and the testing process drive the award categories.
The Earthmate PN-60w with SPOT Satellite Communicator was one of only 13 innovative products that have been honored with a 2011 Backpacker Editors’ Choice Award.
Backpacker Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Dorn explained how his staff, led by Gear Editor Kristin Hostetter, conducts their testing.
“With a core team that has several centuries of combined trail time, along with first descents, decades of retail experience, and expertise in every backcountry discipline, Kristin puts new products through an unprecedented level of real-world abuse in every terrain and weather imaginable,” said Dorn. “She also oversees a transparent process that has earned an unrivaled amount of trust from readers, retailers, and manufacturers. The results are reviews that lead consumers to smart, durable products that consistently prove their worth with years of best-in-class performance.”
DeLorme Vice President Caleb Mason added, “The Backpacker Editors’ Choice Award bestows enormous credibility and we are very proud to add this to the numerous honors we’ve already received for this product.”
Indeed, the Earthmate PN-60w with SPOT Satellite Communicator has been the most-honored outdoor GPS product since it was launched in September. Previous honors include Popular Mechanics 2010 Breakthrough Award, 2010 National Geographic Gear of the Year honors, and a 2011 Consumer Electronics Association Innovations Award.
The Earthmate PN-60w with SPOT Satellite Communicator is available at outdoor, electronics, and GPS retailers and websites in both the U.S. and Canada. Topo North America GPS maps and PC software are included in the package. For more information, visit www.delorme.com 
or call 800-561-5105.
See a video about the device here.
About DeLorme
DeLorme is the longtime leader in innovative mapping and GPS solutions for both consumer and professional markets. The company’s Earthmate PN-Series GPS receivers feature rugged, waterproof designs and provide a wide array of DeLorme topographic and street maps, plus aerial imagery and nautical charts. The company’s business and government solutions include a variety of World and North America mapping datasets and XMap GIS software tools. Located in Yarmouth, Maine, DeLorme is home to Eartha™, the world’s largest rotating and revolving globe. Learn more at www.delorme.com.
About Spot LLC
The SPOT product family uses both the GPS satellite network to determine a customer’s location and the Globalstar network to transmit messages and GPS coordinates to others including an international rescue coordination center. Spot LLC, a subsidiary of Globalstar, Inc. (Nasdaq: GSAT), provides emergency notification technology that allows users to communicate from remote locations around the globe. Thanks to this affordable, cutting edge personal safety device, the company offers people peace of mind by allowing customers to notify friends and family of their location and status, and to send for emergency assistance in time of need, completely independent of cellular phone or wireless coverage. For more information on how Spot LLC is helping others stay connected – from disaster preparedness to outdoor adventure – visit www.findmeSPOT.com.
About Backpacker:
Backpacker (www.backpacker.com) brings the outdoors straight to the reader’s doorstep, inspiring and enabling them to go more places and enjoy nature more often. The authority on active adventure, Backpacker is the world’s first GPS-enabled magazine and website, and the only outdoor media whose editors personally test the hiking trails, camping gear, and survival tips they publish. Backpacker’s Editors’ Choice Awards, an industry honor recognizing design, feature and product innovation, has become the gold standard against which all other outdoor-industry awards are measured. And the magazine recently launched mobile media applications that allow users to text-message hiking maps and directions to their phones. In the last four years, Backpacker has won five National Magazine Awards, the publishing industry’s highest honor. In 2008, the magazine won the NMA for General Excellence, joining The New Yorker, Mother Jones, GQ, and National Geographic as top winners in their respective size categories. In 2009, it won three awards, including General Excellence Online. Backpacker has also won numerous other print, design, and digital awards, and its writers have been recognized in prestigious contests and best-of-the-year anthologies.
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The Women's Outdoor News, aka The WON, features news, reviews and stories about women who are shooting, hunting, fishing and actively engaging in outdoor adventure. This publication is for women, by women. View all posts by The WON
