Gear of the Week | Arva Evo 5

Particularly small avalanche beacons have been around for a long time, but in the past they were mostly one- or two-antenna devices, which is simply no longer up to date (we hope all our readers now have a solid device with three antennas). The Evo 5 has three antennas and also offers all the other important functions of a modern avalanche transceiver. It guides you visually and acoustically quickly and without major detours to a transmitting avalanche transceiver or, in an emergency, to a buried victim, offers a decent recommended search strip width of 50 metres, a sophisticated marking function to support the search for several buried victims, a group check function and a configurable automatic switchover to transmit mode when stationary.

All in all, the Evo 5 offers everything you need in an avalanche transceiver. Of course, the "big" devices are all a little more configurable and also have a slightly higher range, but in principle the Evo 5 should also satisfy demanding users.

However, I would like to mention one disadvantage: the slider for switching the device on, off and on again is not the best solution. Accidental adjustment did not occur, but it is not very intuitive to switch the device off, for example. Once the slider has been set to "Off", the marker button must be pressed within a short time to switch the device off, otherwise it will continue to transmit for security reasons. In any case, I have already managed to keep the device transmitting overnight several times...

Here is the link to the Arva website with further information