ACR Electronics
Fort Lauderdale, since 1956 — the rescue beacon that talks to a government satellite system and never asks for a subscription.
ACR has built rescue beacons since 1956, and its core product does one thing a satellite messenger does not: a 406 MHz PLB or EPIRB talks directly to Cospas-Sarsat, the government-run international search-and-rescue satellite system, with no subscription, no account, and no plan to lapse. Registration with NOAA is free. The battery lasts years. That is a different promise from an inReach — narrower and, in one specific way, harder to break — and understanding the difference is the whole reason this page exists.
- 1956ACR's rescue-products origin claim
- 406 MHzThe Cospas-Sarsat distress frequency — no subscription, ever
- 5 yearsTypical beacon battery service interval, replaced at a certified center
What we'd reach for
- ResQLink 400The personal locator beacon. One job — send a distress signal to the satellite system — with nothing to renew and nothing to forget.
- ResQLink ViewThe PLB with a display, so you can see that the signal is going out.
- GlobalFix V6The current EPIRB family — the marine version that activates on immersion and is registered to the vessel.
- Ocean Signal rescueME PLB3The distinct beacon line from Ocean Signal, the UK marine-safety company ACR acquired in May 2015. Same parent, separate products.
- Bivy StickThe exception that proves the rule — a two-way satellite messenger ACR acquired in 2021. This one does take a subscription; it is the inReach-style counterpart in ACR's own catalog.
- AISLink MOBMan-overboard beacon that alerts the vessels around you over AIS — the local version of the distress story.
- ARTEX ELT 345The aviation side. Emergency locator transmitters are why pilots know this company even if boaters don't.
- C-Strobe and FireflyVisual distress lights — the last, simplest layer of being findable.
Every satellite messenger sold today carries a quiet asterisk: requires an active plan. The SOS button on a lapsed subscription is a piece of plastic.
ACR’s core products carry no asterisk. A 406 MHz beacon talks to Cospas-Sarsat — the international search-and-rescue satellite system run by governments, not a company — and using it costs nothing, ever. You buy the beacon, you register it with NOAA (free, renewed every two years), and for the next several years it does exactly one thing: tell the rescue system who you are and where you are, anywhere on earth.
ACR has been building these since 1956, from Fort Lauderdale, for boats, aircraft, and people who walk beyond coverage.
A beacon is not a messenger
This is the decision that matters, and it is honest in both directions.
A PLB cannot text your family. It cannot share your track, tell anyone you’re merely late, or have a conversation with a rescue coordinator. It is a distress instrument — one button, one meaning, maximum seriousness. Trigger it and the machinery of national search-and-rescue starts moving.
A messenger with a lapsed plan cannot call a helicopter. The Garmin inReach is a better everyday tool in every way — two-way messages, tracking, weather — and its SOS depends on a commercial subscription staying current and a commercial network staying up.
The serious answer for people who go far out is often both: the messenger for communication, the beacon for the day everything else has failed. ACR itself sells both sides of the argument — it acquired Bivy Stick, a two-way subscription messenger, in 2021, and will happily sell you the asterisk too.
What ownership actually costs
No subscription does not mean no obligations, and ACR is direct about them.
The battery is not yours to change. Beacon batteries are replaced at certified service centers, typically on an interval of around five years, and an activation — real or accidental — means a battery service before the beacon is fully rated again. EPIRBs with Category 1 hydrostatic releases add a two-year replacement interval on the release mechanism.
Registration accuracy is part of the system. The satellite tells rescuers what you registered. A stale phone number or an unregistered beacon makes their job slower exactly when slow is expensive. And a false alert should be followed by an immediate phone call — the system takes every 406 MHz signal seriously, which is precisely why it works.
Ocean Signal and ARTEX
Two more names live inside this company. Ocean Signal, the British marine-safety maker ACR acquired in May 2015, continues as its own product line — the rescueME beacons are some of the smallest in the category. ARTEX is the aviation side: emergency locator transmitters that are standard equipment in general aviation.
And the parent has changed: ACR now sits inside Acron Technologies, a TJC-backed aerospace and defense technology platform. Like Steiner and Vortex elsewhere on this site, that is a fact worth knowing plainly: this is rescue technology with a defense-industry owner, not a family marine shop.
Where ACR fits
Offshore and coastal boats. The GlobalFix EPIRB is the category-defining purchase, and for many vessels a regulatory one.
Anyone beyond coverage without a subscription appetite. A ResQLink in the pack lid is the cheapest insurance per year of standby in this entire catalog.
Pilots. ARTEX is why.
Not for: everyday communication — that is Garmin inReach or ACR’s own Bivy line. Not for anyone unwilling to do the small honest chores of ownership: registration, battery service, and treating the button like what it is.
Why we rate them
The subscription-free promise is structural, not marketing. Cospas-Sarsat is a public system. Nobody can lapse you out of it.
They sell both answers. A company that makes PLBs and acquired a subscription messenger is not pretending one tool does everything — and its product pages say plainly which is which.
Seventy years of doing one thing. Being findable is the company’s entire subject. On a site named for being prepared, that earns a page.
When the plan is lapsed, the phone is dead, and the day has gone as wrong as a day can go, we reach for ACR.