How to select a good GPS tracker?

If you are entering into GPS tracker business before long, and you are willing to grow gradually in this business, the most important thing is to select a good GPS tracker product. While facing the countless suppliers in the market, how to select a good GPS tracker?

A good GPS tracker should be cost-effective, good quality and service, as well as it should support a good GPS tracking platform.

1.What is cost-effective?

Most of the people think that cheap is the cost-effective, which is seriously misunderstanding the meaning of cost-effective. If you are only in pursuit of cheap price, you will be beaten by it correspondingly quality or service finally. When we are discussing price with supplier, we are not going to bargain with them like buying some cabbage in the plaza, we have to understand the product’s real value and what its main costly part is. GPS tracker is consist of two main part, one is GSM module/chipset, another is GPS module/chipset. The price of these two modules/chipsets decides the cost of the device.

When we are querying a GPS tracker from a supplier, it suggests to getting their products specification first. In the specification documents, you can get to know what GSM module and GPS module they are using, or what main chipset they are using. According to the module or chipset brand and model, you can search out the cost from website or from the module or chipset supplier directly. Sometimes you may find the suppliers give you the specification are similar, while their price are big difference, which may because some of them have not given the correct details while only copied other’s information, or some were using second hand materials in production. Besides, the scale of company also affects the cost much. If two companies are offering 99% similar products, the higher price one may spend higher operation expense, lower price one may be a small individual workshop, except the company who covets high profits.

2.How to check the tracker’s quality?

In fact, we are unable to check the quality by only read the specification of the tracker, and even when we get a real device in hand, we cannot judge it as a qualified product in short time unless we have tested in real for some time. When you are interested in a tracker, the first thing you need to do is purchase sample device from supplier. After received it, we can check basically the module or chipset is as the same as the specification described, and check if there are any signs of renovation since a lot of over cheap product are using second hand materials. During these years, as the development of applying the chipset like MTK and Spreadtrum, many suppliers abandoned the previous module solutions, cost saved and device become smaller, while because the researching ability between suppliers are unbalanced, the tracker quality are different which will depend on your lucky index in purchasing. Usually, if you find a tracker is still using module, you won’t have reason to doubt its quality since module are usually offered by well branded company like Qualcomn, Huawei, Simcom, Quectel etc. which would be designed more perfect and under strict testing procedure by their strong and professional team. Besides the hardware, firmware is also an important fact of the quality. A company with excellent researching team and standard design process would create a good firmware flawless which can running more than 10 years without issue, while less rigorous company would create a firmware becomes your nightmare which may cause errors over and over again till you suspect the tracker business.

3.Whether the supplier provides you with comprehensive service?

In GPS tracker business, service is very important because GPS tracker is a complicated product which covers hardware, firmware and platform. A tracker supplier who can offer an excellent service would help you develop fast in this business. Generally, we should define the service as two parts like the service before sales and the service after sales. Beyond all questions, the supplier would offer you very good service before sales to obtain your acknowledgment so to establish the business with you. As a tracker purchaser, we would need this good service as well as their professional technical knowledge so to give us a good suggestion in select a correct tracker, meanwhile, we need understand their attitude in share you their product protocol which would be a important document when you decide to transfer your tracker device to a different platform. If the supplier is not willing to disclose protocol, or intend to attract you by using their platform as condition, it would have an underlying problem in future. As for after sales service, it start from the invoice the supplier create for you which would help you save tax cost and save time in dealing with custom affairs, then comes to the package and shipment, for example, if they often miss accessories, if they often delay shipment or using very bad shipping channel etc.. In the following, when you received the goods, how patient they would teach you the knowledge of using the device. Anyway, you will meet with issue in their package, shipment and using the device, it’s not a terrible thing only if they can solve it finally, the most terrible thing is when you have issue and the supplier won’t solve.

4.How are their tracking platforms?

The tracker must work with tracking platform, you will either use your own platform (own developed, purchased software license and installed in your own server or the third party who offer platform service) or the supplier’s. Some supplier would offer free tracking platform for customer to host device, some may charge certain service fee. If you are getting a free tracking platform with full features and well loading speed in system by lucky coincidence, congratulations, usually we won’t be this lucky, we need to get demo account from supplier to test for some time to check the performance in platform, and confirm if the supplier can offer customization, how will they charge for the job, and if there is any invisible cost or condition. As for a charging platform, it would be easy for you to communicate as per your requirements based on their quotation.