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Remember about three years ago when Garmin bought Tri-Tronics and sent shockwaves through the dog world and caused everyone to lament that it would be the downfall of the stalwart company?
Remember how even the wine-sipping New York City slickers at Gizmodo, who train kickin-sized dogs to perform stupid pet tricks during the Academy Awards, even had something bad to say about the buyout?
Remember how everyone said it was bad, bad, bad?
Yeah, well. Everyone can eat their words.
Thanks to big brother Garmin, Tri-Tronics has just upgraded its Pro Series collars to include new features – while lowering the price considerably.
All of the units feature smaller and lighter weight receivers, and two have built-in beacon lights. A new charging system uses micro-USB plugs and a cool new clip-on charging unit. Here’s the down and dirty of each from the Tri-Tronics crew on Gun Dog Supply’s website.
Pro 550
“Take the best collar we sell, the Pro 500, add built-in beacon lights and a bark collar, then add 3 more STIM levels to the top end, add vibration, and then knock $110 off the price.”
Yeah, you read that right. More options, more stimulation levels and more than $100 less at $399.
Pro 70
“Take the Classic 70 and add a built-in bark collar and beacon lights. And that’s it. New features don’t mess up the simple, one-handed operation so you can focus on correcting your dog, not looking at your transmitter.”
The Pro 70 retails for $299. If you think about it, you can’t buy a decent bark collar and entry level e-collar for that price. With the Pro 70 you get both, and it’s expandable to more dogs. No brainer.
**
Trashbreaker Pro**
“Take the Trashbreaker, double the range to 4-miles, expand it to up to 9 dogs, and add a new, high-visibility color scheme. That’s the new Trashbreaker Pro.”
For houndsmen, a nine-dog unit with more range is a pretty good buy at $450.
At any rate, it doesn’t seem like the Garmin buyout of Tri-Tronics has hurt the company at all. The economy of scale has allowed the company to continue to offer quality products, with more and more features, at a lower price point. That’s some “bad” news I’ll take any day.