Raymarine Chartploter - Lacking

Until I bought a Raymarine E-90W chart-plotter at the Miami boat show in February I was using a Garmin 740 Chart-plotter.
After installing the Raymarine unit with Radar and getting a little use out of it, I'm very surprised that two very important features are not available on the Raymarine units.

When navigating a route, it is not possible to display time to destination or distance to destination when viewing the chart application or radar application. It is possible to view this information but the route information page must be brought up requiring several button presses to get there. And then to return to the radar or chart-plotter page several buttons must be pressed again.
This seems to me to be basic information that most folks would want always displayed. My Garmin unit does that and will probably continue to be my primary chart-plotter.

Secondly, each route on my Raymarine unit will only hold up to 50 waypoints. I guess the good folks at Raymarine have never created a route on their chart-plotters when navigating the AICW as the 50 waypt limitation will get you only a few miles.

Had I know of these two limitations before I bought the Raymarine unit I would have reconsidered.

Capt. Tim,

Did you talk with Raymarine technical service? That sounds strange as it was a feature on the older SL and RL series.

Tim: This is important info. I hope you do consult with a Raymarine Tech on the matter because these are items so basic and fundamental that it's hard to believe they would be omitted. Heck, even both my car Nav's have those features. I was also at the Miami show and saw Raymarine's impressive display, but I ended up going to the UPS Store booth for Garmin 7212, radar and sound box.

Moonstruck said:

Capt. Tim,

Did you talk with Raymarine technical service? That sounds strange as it was a feature on the older SL and RL series.

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Don I did and this is the reply I got from them:

However, none of Raymarine's MFDs currently feature support for populating the Databar or a data cell within the Data application with ETA at Route Destination or Distance remaining to Route Destination. A feature request has been logged to consider the addition of these features within future MFD software updates and future chartplotting product designs.

And this later reply which is perhaps and indication of their willingness to consider user requested upgrades:

Tim,
You're welcome to send mail to the MFD program manager via the information below. That said, the intent and rational behind the requested feature is well understood. However to date, the requested feature has been pushed out due to higher prior features and feature corrections.

healhustler said:

Tim: This is important info. I hope you do consult with a Raymarine Tech on the matter because these are items so basic and fundamental that it's hard to believe they would be omitted. Heck, even both my car Nav's have those features.

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Thanks for that input. I think I'm going to start a new thread on TF and a couple of other boating forums requesting Raymarine uses input on how easy they feel Raymarines user interface is and how it compares to Garmin. I will include that info on my contact with Rays software manager.

healhustler said:

I was also at the Miami show and saw Raymarine's impressive display, but I ended up going to the UPS Store booth for Garmin 7212, radar and sound box.

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Damn good decision! I use to have Raymarine gear on several boats but when I really investigated the market, I found better electronics at about the same price elsewhere.