no personal experince with "new" Simrad since they became a part of Navico other than played with the units a bit.
Prior to Navico Simrad was very good stuff with the service behind 'em.
After being taken into the Navico fold, Simrad saw the same poor customer service as the rest of the Navico family which was unfortunate.
Very recent times, Navico has seemed to have listened to their consumers and critics and bolstered their support departments to much more satisfactory levels.
I can remember a time when i tried to get CS for a newly purchased Lowrance LCX unit which was found to have had a defective GPS antannae--i got so frustrated i was close to taking it back to the dealer (2.5 hour drive!) and demanding a refund (could not get any CS via email or phone for months).
Simrad used to carry a premium price as it was a premium product; not so sure now, i feel it looks like a re-badged, abeit different casing, Lowrance product with a more expensive price tag than the Lowrance. I don't think most other consumers are literally buying this too as sales for Simrad are not impressive.
If you're willing to pay for a premium product, i'd recommend #1 Furuno, then Garmin or Raymarine.
Love my Furuno and their service is simply unmatched, heck they helped me with the old Vx1 hardware along with the new NN3D.
Great email support, even followed up the email support by calling my cell phone, and when i called their # on a different occasion, the phone was answered by a real person and i was promptly transferred to a tech with real training and real knowledge of their products.
Not sure what Raymarine is going to be like as FLIR has bailed/bought them out. Hopefully they will continue their tradition and then things will be good.
Garmin support is decent--only problem i see is that their support techs are not experts with their vast array products and that they discontinue support relatively quickly to product that has only recently stopped being produced.
Many choices for the boater which is good, but makes it more difficult to choose as well.
