I have used one the past few years to be able to talk to my kids. It works great compared to a normal sat phone. Nice to be able to move a bit while talking since it can be left in one spot and Bluetooths to your cell. It gives a more detailed weather report than the inreach and you can text a much longer message (think it’s 1k characters). That being said, I still carry the inreach and will leave the iridium go in a cache at the strip or at a base camp. I am typically circling back to that spot 1-2 times in a 10 day period and that’s when I call.
The battery on the iridium goes a bit quicker than the inreach. If your thought is to just turn it on 1-2x a day to check messages or call you’d probably be fine for 10 days. To leave it on like an inreach would probably drain the battery fairly quick and be hard to keep the antenna up while in your pack. It’s great for a Sat phone but did not replace the inreach for my purposes.
