PRODUCT REVIEW
ON X OFFROAD MAPS Making off-road navigation and trail finding a breeze
O
ne of the most enjoyable aspects of UTV ownership is the seemingly limitless access to serene nature settings it allows. How many times have you hard-parked your UTV on the side of a trail to admire a view or snap a photo of a surreal sunset for the ‘gram? What if there was a smart phone app that would allow you easy access to a database with thousands of those spots? Fortunately, it exists, and it’s dubbed “onX Offroad”. onX is a GPS-based mapping app that works across Android and iOS devices small or large. It also has a web portal where you can map trails from a PC, which speeds up the routemaking process incredibly. It’s free to try, but costs $29.99 per year for the full version. onX advertises over 425,000 miles of mapped off-road trails available on the application, and it offers some unique advantages over other off-road GPS programs. We have been using the onX Offroad app for some time now, and we have come away impressed. When you first boot up the app, it
defaults to your current location and immediately begins searching for nearby trails. It will offer you a list of trails ranked by technical difficulty, with images, trail length and duration available for your perusal. If you already have a destination in mind and want to see trails in that area, a search bar at the top of the app home screen allows easy access to any mapped area. onX also offers the ability to download offline map data in three different resolutions, meaning you can save a brief trail map or a fully detailed, interactive one. We got in the habit of saving detailed map data for the areas we ride in most, and it has come in handy when cell reception drops off. We have noticed that only some of the trails in the areas we ride in were shown in the app, but not labeled. These are still usable in the tracking and mapping sections, which allows you to use them as part of a planned route. Inside the onX app, you’ll see four different colored trails marked. Blue trails are “Featured” trails, complete with the most information: photos, difficulty ratings, descriptions, directions from the highway, etc. Green trails are open and ready to
ride, complete with basic information. Red trails are temporarily closed and complete with basic information. Lastly, black and white dashed trails are hiking, biking, equestrian, or unmapped trails (like the ones mentioned above). There are also different colored map layers that show who maintains or controls the land, be it BLM, Military, State Recreation, etc. Placing waypoints on the map at any time is a breeze, and it allows you to customize the color, icon, name, description, add photos, and share them with any other onX user. This is a handy practice, as you can spend a little time before any trip perusing the satellite map images of the area you plan on visiting to find points of interest. Then, when you arrive at the ride site, simply click on any of the waypoints you’ve created and navigate to it. We found ourselves browsing the map between rides as well, searching for new places to ride and trails we haven’t explored just yet. The app is still evolving, which means that not all trails will have fully-fleshed information. Some may not even exist yet at all. However, in our experience, there were a large amount of trails available in the app during our testing time. As a companion app, onX is one of the best we have ever used, and its simplicity gives it major points in our book. Download the app on your phone today to start a 7-day free trial, and get out and explore some new trails. Many of us are all guilty of riding what we know the most often, so let onX Offroad be your motivation to get out and explore more!
www.ONXMaps.com Apple App Store/
Google Play Store: onX Offroad 48 UTVOFFROADMAG.COM
Price: $29.99/year
