Rented one and liked it so much I bought it. Works great as far as practice goes. Lucky enough to not have had to actually use it.

Although it claims to be a three antenna digital beacon, it seems Ortovox has stripped the best parts of the technology out. First, it switches to fully digital much too late, when you're already within 15m. It would speed up the search greatly if the directional arrows activated as soon as possible to vector directly to the buried beacon. Second, the third antenna is supposed to allow the beacon to resolve spikes, which can make it appear buried beacon is up to two meters away. However, the Patroller was completely unable to resolve spikes. For the money, I think the proven Tracker DTS is a much better choice.

If you want a simple user interface, value a long range, and are comfortable with analog-only and then distance-only searching skills for a significant portion of the secondary search phase, yet still want a directional beacon (for a portion of the secondary search phase), then this is a beacon for you — and indeed, probably the only beacon that meets your criteria.
My full review is available here:
http://www.wildsnow.com/1577/ortovox-patroller-x1-review/

The Ortovox Partoller Beacon is really easy to handle and very simple. Compared to the Mammut Pulse Beacon however, it is a lot slower in responding to changes of direction.

I have used my friend's triple-antenna Ortovox Patroller Avalanche Beacon before and knew I would be getting a good product. It is easy to use exept for trying to figure out how to strap it on correctly/comfortably- despite directions/pictures on the beacon itself.

I bought a Patroller beacon about 2 months ago to replace my Ortovox F1, which I had for about 9 years and loved. During a week of touring in the Canadian Rockies the Patroller proved very unreliable. When we did transceiver tests the others in the group sometimes could not detect my beacon at all. This was especially true if there were multiple beacons transmitting simultaneously. The signal from my beacon seemed to get drowned out by the others. Once the other transmitting beacons were shut off, my beacon would be picked up again, although not always in quite the right direction.

When searching with the Patroller, I found that it was functional but imperfect. The range was about 25 yards and it tended to detect the signal 180 degrees from the transmitter stronger than the signal in the direction of the transmitter. I realize it is normal to pick up a signal in the opposite direction from the transmitter, but it was surprising that that signal was clearly and consistently stronger. This could lead to wasted time during searches. I found it much more difficult to determine the direction to the transmitter accurately than with my old F1, which seems strange since the Patroller is supposed to have lots of new technology (e.g., 3 antenna digital) that the F1 doesn't.

My batteries were brand new and were reading 99%, so I don't think that was the problem. Maybe I just got a defective unit. Generally I'm a fan of Ortovox products, but I returned the beacon and think I will buy the Pieps DSP.

David

Its easy to use , comfortable to wear I use mine while snowmobiling and highly recommend it !!