Electronics Upgrade

[2006 Adventure 208]

Looking to upgrade my chart plotter / sonar / radar on my Grady. What are you guys using and what do you recommend shopping for. Presently I am using 12 year old Furuno equipment. It has served me well over the years. I see that Furuno is having a $ 1,500.00 rebate program through June 2014 on their T Z Touch screen units. I use Lowrance equipment on my other boat that also has worked well for me.
Any information / recommendations from you all would be most helpful in making a decision. Thank you in advance.

 

[swaterhouse]

Lots of great info on The Hull Truth electronics forum.

The TZ touch is an awesome unit and with the rebate is well priced, but the radar and sounder are way more expensive than the others.

The new Simrad NSS evo2 units are they way I am leaning, but I am worried about their shipping dates. The 7" is due to start shipping any day, the 12" isn't due until June!

I also like the Garmin 7212 but it's a little too big for my dash, and I am concerned about future support as they won't be supporting the new GCV-10 on the 7000 series, only the 8000 series and newer.

 

[beachbum]

This is a tuff question, it depends how you use the boat (offshore/inshore); what programs you use most often (chart, fishfinder, radar) and which specific units you intend to buy. Assuming you are looking at units that are at equal level of complixity, here is my exoerience (for what its worth) I have had Raymarine (E120), lowrance (HDS 10)and now have twin garmin 4212's- The Garmins are very intuitive but I don't like their split screen option as much as I liked Raymarine's split screen and RM's custom screen views. Raymarine had a better fishfinder and charting (Navionics). Raymarine was not as intuitive as Garmin or Lowrance. The one downside to Garmin is their charting software (even with their additional blueseas chip) Garmin doesn't use Navionics - and the Navionics charts ate better than Garmins own software if you are trying to fish lumps- navionics has much more detail in their charts. I fish quite often on boats that have furuno, the units work well. Raymarine (I had e120's) had great sonar, great radar was great and split screen/charting was great. My preference- Raymarine, furuno, Simrad......then Garmin. The reason I included Simrad because it is lowrance on steroids- better screen, more pixels.Ther's my 2cents!

 

[Great Escape]

I had a color Lowrance GPS/fish finder combo. It was great size for the electronic box on my 2008 228. The fish finder worked great. I primarily used it for striper and bluefish fishing. The gps map was great too with zero issues. My radar was a separate Furuno product. it was relatively inexpensive but was effective when needed.

 

[provisions]

After weeks of research and comparisons, I went with Raymarine on my 265 Express. The flush mount e127 Hybrid touch is the main chart plotter, radar display, and SiriusXM weather display. For me, it is hard to beat the Navionics Platinum+ chip. The sonar function on the e127 is the backup to the primary Dragonfly7 sonar/fish finder (which is used as the chart plotter backup to the e127 and is also flush mount). It is topped off with the Raymarine 4KW 48 mile HD radome radar. The e127 also neatly ties into the AIS on the Standard Horizon VHF (which, if you're counting, can act as the 3rd navigation system). As you can tell, I believe in redundancy and efficiency (i.e., everything plays well together) when underway, especially offshore. I hope this helps and does not muddy the waters for you.

 

[ric2352]

Hope it works for you...Raymarine gets constant bad raps on the left coast, in all categories.

 

[Socalinsd1]

Just went through this process with my 1993 208. After much research I decided to go with the proven Garmin 740s plotter/ff. Solid unit, intuitive and touch screen with an Airmar P66 ducer $150. $799 for the Garmin seemed like a good deal. Upgraded to 3d vision for $100. Chose the Standard Horizon GX1700 VHF with integrated GPS for $200. So about $1250 all together for a decent electronics package. Lots of good info on THT for your electronics needs.