Garmin/RayMarine?

Been waiting to install a new chartplotter for a year now. Couldn't decide between Garmin 740s or Ray Marine e7d. Finally threw in the towel today; orderer the e7d. Should have it Thursday. Suggestions?

Send it back and get the 740s.

Anode said:

Send it back and get the 740s.

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+1

Why is that?

motion30 said:

Why is that?

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From my experience with both company products. Garmin is more intuitive. I could work through finding something with out reading the manual and after reading the manual still not sure how to do it. I have had several Garmin products such as a 3010C on my last boat. I now have two Raymarine E 80's. They work just fine but when ever I need to do something I just get the manual out because that is where I'm going to end up anyway.

I'm sure there are folks that love Raymarine but that has not been my experience.

Well, I'm on the RM horse now and in the middle of the stream. So I'm hanging on for the ride. So far I've learned that RM help for the individual is none existant. If your a Corp., great; a private boat owner, "All of our reps are busy". I've been unable to even get a straight answer on which cable I need to connect my existing transducer to their e7D. Shouldn't be that difficult IMHO! Bottom line; RM=PC Garmin=Mac.

I've had the 740 for a year and love it. My boat came with a vintage 1999 raymarine C80. The admiral won't even look at the C80. The touch screen on the Garmin is far superior to the track pad method of navigating the screen or inputting data.

I've used rm customer support and they've been Ok.

dhiggins said:

Well, I'm on the RM horse now and in the middle of the stream. So I'm hanging on for the ride. So far I've learned that RM help for the individual is none existant. If your a Corp., great; a private boat owner, "All of our reps are busy". I've been unable to even get a straight answer on which cable I need to connect my existing transducer to their e7D. Shouldn't be that difficult IMHO! Bottom line; RM=PC Garmin=Mac.

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Seems that even the Raymarine dealers/ installers cannot get thru to them on the telephone most of the time however I have found that contacting them via their website results in prompt (within 24 hours) response and detailed assistance

Bob

I'll bet that most folks turned off by Raymarine either have not used the new gear, or have used legacy equipment only. I find the new generation E-series very easy to use, fast, and reliable. With regards to a product line being intuitive, have you ever tried Furuno? Amazing gear, but the operating manual must be by the helm station at all times......

I currently run an E7D hard mounted at the lower helm, and use my iPad as a second station anywhere I am on the boat. Its an amazing piece of hardware, and has worked flawlessly. On the new boat, I'm going thru all the manufacturers to figure out which system meets our needs the best and has the best value.

Once you buy it you will learn how to use it.

You spent the money So you better

Then you will be good to go.

You may even become a fan. Once you get it all figured out.

For me I'M a Garmin Fan. Plug and play.

Sd

dhiggins said:

So far I've learned that RM help for the individual is none existant. If your a Corp., great; a private boat owner, "All of our reps are busy". I've been unable to even get a straight answer on which cable I need to connect my existing transducer to their e7D. Shouldn't be that difficult IMHO! Bottom line; RM=PC Garmin=Mac.

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While neither Raymarine nor Garmin would be my choice for marine electronics, I have been reading and hearing the same sort of thing about Raymarine equipment ever since they split off from Raytheon. The products themselves seem to have a lot of great features. But reliability and in particular repair and customer support are woefully inadequate. From your experience it sounds as though they have not improved.

Regarding Furuno's intuitiveness, we have a Furuno NavNet VX2 radar/C-Map plotter and while it took some sessions with the manual to learn the thing, once learned it's very easy to use.

The most unintuitive plotter I have used to date is the Standard Horizon we put on our fishing boat the other year. Brightest screen in the industry, which is why we bought it. But it is not at all intuitive to use. The manual is a constant companion when doing things like editing routes and so on.

Like anything else, if you use it enough and use it frequently you'll eventually learn all the things that are unintuitive. But if it's a piece of equipment you don't use all that often you're always sliding back down toward the bottom of the learning curve between uses.

Furuno YES!

When there is a choice , using what the commercial boats use is always better , at least it will operate and service 5 -15 years down the road will just be a phone call away.

Pau Hana said:

have you ever tried Furuno? Amazing gear, but the operating manual must be by the helm station at all times......

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So true!

I've been using our Navnet VX2 system for 6 seasons and still keep the now ratty looking manual close by.

Marin said:

Like anything else, if you use it enough and use it frequently you'll eventually learn all the things that are unintuitive. But if it's a piece of equipment you don't use all that often you're always sliding back down toward the bottom of the learning curve between uses.

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That about sums it up. My Raymarine equipment is about 3 generations behind the current series. It does all I need---2 10" displays, high def fish finder,72 mile radar, chart plotter, radar overlay on the chart, interface to auto pilot, stores routes, and I know how to move around the functions. It doesn't do weather or a TV picture, but I can do without that. When will I upgrade? Probably if I decide to sell the boat. If I upgrade now, the equipment could be dated by then.

I will be taking a hard look at Furuno next time.

My suggestion is for anyone trying to decide what manufacturer of electronics gear to buy from is to actually call their support line and see what happens. I've been a long time Raymarine user but when I bought my current boat 4 years ago and was considering the electronics, I couldn't even find a phone number for Raymarine support while Furuno makes it easy to call them and I have found rarely do I have to wait long for a human to talk too. So I went with Furuno because of their support.

But then again, I needed help a lot to get the Furuno gear working. The NavNet2 gear, which I have, must have been designed to have an EE around to install it. Very painful.

Ron

windmist said:

The NavNet2 gear, which I have, must have been designed to have an EE around to install it. Very painful.

Ron

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Interesting. My wife and I installed our NavNet ourselves. Of course having the antenna mount on the flying bridge face made running the cable a five minute task. One of the only two advantages of a flying bridge antenna mount.

We designed a short tower to center the antenna on the existing flying bridge mount since the Furuno radome does not mount centered and had PYI make it for us.

The only thing I needed help with was aligning the display. The local Furuno dealer from whom we bought the thing came to the boat with me and spent a couple of hours showing me how to do this and other things (for free, one of the advantages of buying gear from a local dealer than from the internet).

And most valuable, he gave me the "secret code" to get into the deep setup mode of the system, something that is not included in the manual for some reason. So if in the future we need to go in and change some basic settings we can do it on our own.

Other than that initial display alignment we've had no issues with the unit at all.

And while we haven't needed it so far, knowing that the Furuno factory service center is nearby is nice.

Marin said:

Interesting. My wife and I installed our NavNet ourselves. Of course having the antenna mount on the flying bridge face made running the cable a five minute task. One of the only two advantages of a flying bridge antenna mount.

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I was exaggerating a bit but I may have had a more complex installation than you did, Marin. I have an Airmar PB100 feeding into a RD30 on the upper helm, feeding into a second RD30 on the lower helm feeding into the display. I also have a Comnav autopilot feeding into the display and an Milltech AIS feeding into the display and a GPS and the Autopilot compass feeding into the display. Oh, did I mention the fishfinder. The big problem was getting the proper NEMA0183 sentences turn on or off to display the data I wanted. Furuno support was really needed to make this happen and it did. I have all this well documented now so if I lose the setup, I can recreate it (I hope). I also had to make a wiring diagram of the hookup in case something goes wrong. Then I had a lot of problems interfacing the stereo so I could see the playlist of the Furuno display. (Just kidding!)

Now compare this to Raymarine where all you do is run the Seatalk cables to the various components. Anyway that was how is was with the now 6 year old gear I had then. Can't speak on the new stuff.

I still have a problem when using radar overlay where the chart is not in alignment with the radar. Furuno has been no help here because I have the Comnav autopilot compass. No way to adjust it out according to them.

Marin, isn't that radar transmitting right into your crouch? You better get a check up. You may be sterile.

Ron

Ron--- Your installation was very definitely more complex than ours. We simply had to mount the radome and run the cable to the display which is on a retractable mount in the overhead at the lower helm. So the display unit is about four or five feet away from the radome with a straight, no-obstruction run. The rest of the 30' cable is coiled up under the flying bridge console. And our radar/plotter doesn't interface with anything other than to feed a position signal to the VHF.

We thought about adding the black box to superimpose the radar over the plotter but with a seven-inch display (the preferable ten-inch unit wouldn't fit on our retractable mount and we really like the retractable mount) the screen would be too cluttered. We haven't had much of a problem comparing the radar display to the plotter display. If it really got critical we could put the plotter in course up (we normally run it in north up) and the radar and plotter would be more or less aligned.

We don't drive the boat from the flying bridge at all so the position of the radome is not a concern. And the signal from these kinds of radars is so weak that I'm told the only way you could even begin to expose yourself to too much radiation is to hold your head hard against the side of the radome with the antenna transmitting 24/7 for a week.

But better safe than sorry so if we have guests who want to ride up there we don't use the radar when they're up top. If the visibility is such that we need the radar we don't let guests go up.

windmist said:

Marin, isn't that radar transmitting right into your crouch? You better get a check up. You may be sterile.

Ron

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That could be turned into a profit center to defray the cost of boating. Can you imagine a none surgical vasectomy? Plenty of people would pay for not having to go through the surgery, and you could charge for the cruise too!

Moonstruck said:

That could be turned into a profit center to defray the cost of boating. Can you imagine a none surgical vasectomy? Plenty of people would pay for not having to go through the surgery, and you could charge for the cruise too!

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Yeah, but they'd have to be riding up there for a year with the radar on before the non-surgical vasectomy "took." We don't like visitors on the boat for five minutes, let alone twelve months so that scheme is a non-starter.

Then of course there is the stand alone concept.

Everything is independant , so can be deep sixed as it fails, with no system loss.

Of course you cant lay in your bunk and have your cellphone wake you to report the run time of the head in the guest cabin, woe is me!