Hi!
My DH and I both have RW and have traveled abroad for 2 - 4 weeks a year for the past several years (on RW). In general, we've found it to be fine in terms of connectivity but of course, it depends on where you're traveling to and the reliability of wifi access there and how comfortable you feel jumping onto public-ish-networks. In hotels, hostels, friend's homes, etc. we tend to have enough connection, but sometimes public places are a little more spotty (though we aren't usually making calls in that scenario). FWIW, we've used our RW phones to call/text/ surf on wifi in Greece, Spain, Thailand, Bali, New Zealand, London, etc. YMMV depending on the remoteness of your destinations. Like you mentioned, we do usually download a google map (or pull up a destination before leaving an area w/ wifi) and that's worked fine. Google maps works surprisingly well even when it can't detect where you are in the map.
Full disclosure though - DH is currently exploring switching to Google Fi since he thinks we might save a tiny bit more and have more connectivity overseas (as well in the USA on a remote drive that we make frequently, based off the networks Google uses) than on RW... but since he's the one investigating, I can't say for sure. It's not been a big enough issue to have us switch fast or feel pressured to. We've been generally happy with RW, though I know many others on the forums insist on even cheaper options.
