solid state Doppler radars

need to add radar to a new-to me boat. Will not be fishing (birds).
Mostly for collision avoidance, navigation at night and reduced visibility. Will be 85% coastal, 15% blue water passages.
Will be installed on a low arch on flybridge.

Do the newer doppler solid states add much benefit here?
Also will have some new-to-boating taking watches at the helm so intuitive screen appearance perhaps a help.

Specifically considering Garmin x-hd2 6 kw vs newer 40w 4 ft.

Thanks in advance!

All I can say is that the Garmin Fantim 24 dome radar is awesome! The ability to distinguish between "dangerous" targets and everything else is a handy thing.
We like it a lot!
Bruce

Here is a shot of the radar over chart on our boat right now.
At a glance I can see that the boat to port of our course is not a "dangerous" target but that the one behind us is one to keep an eye on. There is a third vessel that is kind of neutral too.
Just another tool in the drawer.
Bruce

That is very impressive Bruce!!!!

Last year my old Furuno failed in the fog and I was set to purchase a new solid state system. After finding that the fuse holder allowed the fuse to pop out my thoughts were damped by Wifey challenging why I wanted to replace a working system.

So I have put that purchase off and spent more than radar replacement cost on a new hardtop for the helm plus all the canvas materials needed to recanvas our boat. Still, I just might come home one day with a new system anyway

I wouldn't worry too much about doppler vs not, or solid state vs not. For navigation and collision avoidance, good target tracking is what matters. Irrespective of the technology behind it, some companies do and excellent job, and some do a very poor job. I learned this the hard way.

For consistently excellent target tracking, Furuno is the best choice. I haven't personally used Garmin, but have seen enough examples to believe it's good. Simrad/Navico/B&G is near useless. And I don't know the state of Raymarine.

If you really want to test the target tracking on a radar, it's actually quite easy. Pick a target that has AIS, and turn on the heading vectors so you can see speed and direction of movement. Now acquire the same target with the radar, and watch how well the radar tracking matches the AIS reports. The radar tracking should match the AIS reports very closely. Do this a bunch of times with a bunch of different targets in different sea conditions and with different speeds. The radar tracking should consistently match the AIS reports all the time.

My thoughts were to go solid state, possibly with a Raymarine. No actual choices for me at this time. I have not done any research pertaining to choices because as I mentioned in my above post.