Take The Unknown Out Of Your Voyage
With The Trail Tech Voyager Pro
Story By: Kyle Callen
Photos By: Brandon Bunch
The UTV industry is growing at a rapid rate, and to be honest, it’s quite fun to be a part of. For the recreational consumer, this growth means there are tons of great new products hitting the market at an almost overwhelming rate. Some of the most popular and useful ones are things such as GPS systems, belt temp sensors, and audio controllers, but with so many options out there, which ones do you choose? Once you’ve made your purchases the big question becomes; where do you mount all of the gauges and screens? Without going to an aftermarket race style dash, mounting space disappears real quick in today’s UTVs. Thankfully, Trail Tech, the leader in off-road motorcycle digital dashes, has apparently thought about all of these issues and have introduced a genius all in one solution, the Voyager Pro.
All too often, the “all in one” systems don’t live up to the marketing fluff behind them. They seem to do everything just OK, instead of excelling like their stand-alone singular-focused counterparts. So when Trail Tech sent us the Voyager Pro, our expectations honestly were not very high that it would be as user friendly as a smattering of separate gauges and systems would be. The day came and the mailman dropped off our package from Trail Tech, it was time to put the powerful little system to the test.
Upon opening the packaging, we were impressed to find that the small box was packed with all of the accessories needed to immediately utilize all of the Voyager Pro’s features. A very simple Ram-Mount mounting system, the belt temperature sensor, a tachometer lead, and much more are all included. Within 10 minutes, the systems were mounted to the roll cage on both our Can-Am Maverick Sport and Polaris RZR XP Turbo S Velocity via the supplied mounting hardware, plugged in to a 12v outlet via the supplied cable, and powered on. Done!
At this point we aren’t going to mess with the many different gauges, this introduction will focus on the GPS function, the media player, and the exciting Buddy Tracking feature. What is Buddy Tracking you may ask? If you and a group of friends are all equipped with the Voyager Pro system, it uses localized radio signals via the included antenna, and enables you to see the location of up to 20 of your Buddies live on the GPS screen. Everyone knows what a pain it can be trying to stick to someones dust to not get lost, or having to stop and wait or turn around to go look for your misguided soul of a friend, so this should prove to be a very useful feature.
We loaded up in the cars, and began to configure our Voyager Pro units. The Ram mounting system provides near infinite adjustability to put the glove-friendly 4 inch touch screen perfectly in reach, and we had both our iPhones and headphones connected via Bluetooth in moments. The Voyager Pro unit has the ability to stream music from your smartphone to any sound emitting device that has Bluetooth connectivity, and features a Media Screen where you can skip through the songs on your phone, control the volume of the music, and even make or receive phone calls if you’re paired with a compatible Bluetooth headset. We then navigated to the setup menu for Buddy Tracking where you can input the name you want displayed and select your icon color, and you can also activate the Emergency Beacon which will alert everyone in your group should you have troubles on the trail.
With music blasting through headphones and Buddy Tracking set and ready to go, “Bumblebee” and “Night Rider” hit the trails. With the usual dry and dusty conditions, Buddy Tracking definitely proved itself to be a valuable feature to have, you can also turn Buddy Tails on and your friend’s icons will leave a trail on the map showing the exact line they’re taking, allowing you to stay way back and out of the dust without losing track. Since we were taking new and unknown trails on the way out, we had the GPS set to also record our track so we’d have no issue finding our way back as daylight fell to night. The Voyager Pro also allows you to create your own trail map via Trail Tech’s own Ride Leader desktop app, or on the rideleader.com website, save it as a .gpx file, and upload it to the unit via a microSD card. This will be extremely useful for planning out longer adventure style rides.
Sitting back at the house after the ride, we couldn’t help but be stoked on how the Voyager Pros performed. It made it so much more fun to be able to spread out and ride at speed without worrying about losing the leader ahead or those following behind, and we made it out of the desert with no issues thanks to being able to follow our recorded track. We also happened to have our User Screens configured to record and display our average and max speeds, so of course excuses were made when little Bumblebee proved to have been faster. These are either going to be great for a laugh, or they might cause a few fights… The Voyager Pro also has a stopwatch function, which of course would be super useful for recording lap times! There’s so many features included in these Trail Tech units, we aren’t able to cover them all in one story, so look out for more on the Voyager Pro in an upcoming issue of UTV Sports Mag!
