Chartplotters & Cartography, pros and cons

[Richard Cashore]

I'm shopping for my first fixed mount GPS chartplotter. I'm interested in the 7" size. It appears chart type & format is tied to the plotter manufacturer. Can you help me with my selection? I sail in the Chesapeake Bay. Is one more accurate, or user friendly than an other? I've been looking at Raymarine A70, Standard Horizon CP300, Garman 740. Any others I should consider? Is it worth upgrading the chart to the highest level the chart maker offers? How ab out support after the sale?

Any advise will be appreciated.

Richard

[Joe CD MS 300]

I'm a big fan of Garmin and their support and the ease of transferring waypoints and routes between units (I have a ton).

Their units with the preloaded coastal charts are a real bargain IMHO. The 640 is another unit I'd look at. Cheaper and it also has road maps and POI's which is nice for finding things in harbors. Its a transportable model so it can be used in the car also.

[bottomscraper]

As Melissa says go to the store and try them. We have both an
older Garmin (192C, one of the first units with pre-loaded charts)
and a Standard Horizon CP300. Both work well and are easy to
use even without reading the manual. We have gotten good
support from Garmin when the unit died while still
under warrantee, very quick turnaround. The CP300 has a nice
split screen display that lets you see two different zoom levels.
Standard Horizon chart updates come from C-Map Jeppesen
who also provides the software updates for the unit. Our unit
came with back level software, Jeppesen provided a card with the
updated software, we paid a deposit for the memory card but it
was refunded when we returned it after doing the update. They
were easy to deal with.

I wonder about the touch screen on the Garmin 740, may work fine but...

I haven't used a Raymarine A70 but I have found their user
interfaces on our Radar and other peoples plotters to be less
than user friendly, we can only hope they improved.