Chartplotter Comparisons

[marnidave]

Hi All,
Just wondering what everyone on here thinks about garmin vs. raymarine electronics.
Our 46 Moody was hit by lightning last month and the electronics is toast. We presently have Raymarine but Garmin has been recommended. Any thoughts and experience would be appreciated.

Thanks
Dave and Marni

[goboatingnow]

Depends on exactly what you want to fit. Ray probably has the most extensive line of integrated products.

Garmin has some holes most notably in autopilots ( restrictive range) and in instruments ( no analogs and GMI10 is a bit dated now) it does have a good chartplotter range and it's small radar product range has some good stuff.

I would also consider Simrad. However I find that brand expensive in Europe. Raymarines support in NA seems to be poor, based on the feedback on various forums. Yet Rays support in Europe doesn't seem to suffer the same way.

Furuno is good equipment. Some of the pieces are very pricey for what you get ( autopilots etc) some swear by it. Others I know swear at it.

Dave

[Dockhead]

I've used both Garmin and Raymarine. Not the latest generations of anything, so possibly my comments are anachronistic and irrelevant. Besides that, I have INavX on an IPad with Navionics charts as a backup/planning nav system.

The Raymarine gear seems to me to be much more military hardware type quality. I like the logic of the system. I much prefer the Jeppesen C-Map cartography to both Garmin and the Navionics, at least for my area.

I know a lot of people gripe about Raymarine, but I really like the chartplotters.

[sailingaway221]

I have a garmin 4200. The thing integrates well with my Simrad instruments and auto pilot... and it has been easy to learn and use. I have no experience with Raymarine, but I would for sure buy another GArmin if I had to replace the one I have now. Only thing that is a little off on it and I have heard the newer ones are fixed on this too... but it scrolls a little jerky. IE the pointer is a bit jerky.

[Ram]

I have both- I have the Ray e-120 that is just about as good as it gets- I’m going to buy another one for my dive boat next spring to replace the old Garman thats been very good also- the Navonics charts are really great

[svHyLyte]

We have Garmin gear as that is what we started with. The problems with the equipment that I have found are (1) the proprietary chart formats and (2) that Garmin abandons "out of date" units fairly quickly. For example, we have a 2006c that is an excellant unit. However, Garmin's chart formats have been changed without a thought for "backward compatability", hence the lastest chart editions available for that unit are mid-2008 era. While these may be good for a few years more--changes have already rendered many of them unreliable. So, we will shortly have a choice between unreliable charts or new equipment. Likewise repair. We recently had a another Garmin suffer "black screen death". While the unit still works otherwise, the center 2/3rds of the screen is black. Garmin will no longer make repairs to the unit as it's "too old" (8 years).

Think about it...

[s/v Moondancer]

Our entire system is Raymarine some parts of which are 10 yrs old. They have given good service especially the hydraulic autopilot which has steered us flawlessly for 4 yrs and 12,000 miles including 3 days of F8-9 gales.

We had to have one of our two Raymarine E-80's rebuilt after 3 yrs of hard use. Even though it was out of warranty it was rebuilt and new software added for the cost of shipping.

Technical support is good, they talked me through getting a West Marine AIS to work with the Raymarine system and stayed on the phone until the job was done and working.