Looking to buy a replacement chartplotter

[jeronay]

My chartplotter (Raymarine 620) is out and I want to replace it with new chartplotter. Does anyone have insights into the various brands and models. Only one local (Rockport) dealer seems to have strong opinions including positive for Simrad and Garmin and not so much for Raymarine. Any input will be appreciated. Thanks, Jim

[Maine Sail]

They are all pretty good/similar these days. Simrad, Lowrance & Northstar are all owned by the same company and Raymarine & TackTick are now owned by Flir. I find Furuno, Raymarine and Standard Horizon are offering the best tech support these days and Garmin has fallen waaaayyyy behind in this aspect as of late. The techs at Garmin tend to know squat about marine products. It's gotten almost as bad as Xantrex.

Raymarine, Garmin, Lowrance and soon to be others are now all using MAGNETS in their chart plotter doors. DUMB, but it is what it is.

With plotters we are in a transitional period with many brands. The Garmin 740 series is at near end of life cycle while the Raymarine e7 series is brand new and features WiFi and you can send your plotter display to an iPad etc. plus many more features. I just installed an e7 last week and will be installing another one shortly. I am on my way to meet with another owner to quote another electronics package and I sent them looking at all the products at the boat show this winter..

I have trended away from Garmin over the last year and a half due to reliability issues and lack of good tech support. I have Garmin on my own boat but have stopped recommending it as a "primary" recomendation. My Garmin 476 has been back to the factory FOUR times for moisture in the display and I have shipped back two 740's for similar issues. While Raymarine is not perfect I have yet to find a plotter that is so choose one based on what YOU like... Find a re-seller or installer that sells installs all of them if you want an "honest" assessment. A dealer that sells Simrad and Garmin is never going to recommend Furuno or Raymarine...

[Joe Myerson]

FWIW, I bought a Standard-Horizon CP190i chartplotter and C-Map chip at the Defender sale. It was backordered, and arrived yesterday. I'd be happy to report on its performance once it's wired up and the boat is splashed.

My big problem is moving all those Garmin waypoints onto the new system. I think I'll just have to print them out and do 'em all by hand.

--Joe

[satu]

Picked up a Garmin 546S plotter a couple years ago. Very spendy, but love the crisp color display. Very fast startup, pans nicely. Owned Garmin handhelds before that, including the 45 and a 76map. Both were trouble free and served me well. Still use the 76map frequently, primarily to conserve on battery load, but as noted elsewhere, the 76map tidecharts are no longer supported.

When doing my shopping, I found it interesting that power consumption figures were difficult to find. Had to call Garmin. That might be different now, but big displays draw more power and that's a downside. If you like looking at your chartplotter all day, and run an electric autopilot, you'll need to manage you batteries accordingly.

Haven't been cruising enough with the 546 to offer a comprehensive review, but overall, it still seems somewhat overpriced for what it is. If I had to do it over, I might take another look at the 400 series. Really appreciate my 76map, but as I've grown older, my eyes struggle with small LCD displays.

Captain Craig
S/V Satu
CD27 #272
Brunswick, Me

[tartansailor]

Simrad gets my vote, hands down.
Why? because their product line is heavy in commercial
and military applications, and of my peers, never heard a negative.
Dick

[minke]

I don't have a chartplotter recommendation but have had recent experience with Garmin product support. I've got a GPSMap 78sc and trivial experience with it as a marine GPS. I'm a sucker for multipurpose tools and installed Garmin's North America road maps on it, which is supposed to work. The GPS would often freeze while navigating on roads. Garmin marine product support was unable to reproduce my problem and didn't understand how to perform a test. (When someone ships a device in the failed mode the first thing you do shouldn't be to upgrade the software!) Eventually, instead of solving the problem they successfully bought me off with a low end automotive GPS. I bring this up just to recommend care when considering the seductive idea of multipurpose devices.

Garmin product support did not fail in any way on a marine issue in my experience. Nevertheless, the process was very frustrating.