It's a much better tool for the job. And unlike personal locator beacons it can also handle short personal messages. And it's far from $1000 (around $300 and the service from $15 monthly) and really portable. For real emergencies a PLB is arguably better (and doesn't require a paid subscription) but you have to be conscious to activate it. The Garmin can send regular breadcrumbs without triggering an emergency so they will at least know where you were headed. If you are conscious it also allows you to communicate with the rescue operators.
Ham radio is great but not meant to be reliable. It's about experimentation with technology and the sport of making long distance connections. It's not about a reliable rescue service even though it is very useful in emergencies.
With APRS I can find my dog, no monthly, and in large outdoor areas APRS has MUCH better coverage than cell.
Trust me, I want to believe. But the only practical use that my wife (KF1J) and me (WT1J) have for our ham gear is in the rare case where I'm on the boat far away from her and out of cell coverage and need to check in via the HF bands. I'm almost never away from cell coverage. For transoceanic stuff, that is still a common case, but it will soon be better served by portable global internet.
The amateur radio tech license is really easy, I'd say about half is common sense along the lines of do no harm, just an evening or two of studying to get enough of the 30 ish multiple choice questions to pass.
You can buy similar in board form, popular among the high altitude balloon communities.
I use one on my dog's collar and my 2m radio will show me an arrow and distance to the dog. As a bonus I can call family/friend and have them check the world wide APRS map to see if the dog has gone near a repeater.
It's also handy to check the weather, there's quite a few weather stations about and in the mountains the local forecast can be unreliable and a weather station that's MUCH closer than the nearest city can provide handy info on quickly changing weather conditions.
I lost my dog and decided to track her, and all the systems I could find (up to $1,000) were either cellular or pretty much line of site. Ham APRS was AMAZINGLY better than anything commercial I could find. It does direct connections for decent range, but also there's surprisingly good APRS coverage using existing repeaters in the areas I hike in. http://aprs.fi allows global tracking if an APRS widget world wide, and trackers that fit in a dog collar are common and don't carry a monthly subscription fee.