Things change. Nothing is static.
I am shopping for my new build. Thoughts here and elsewhere are followed.
RayMarine was sold. Simrad was sold. Future?
Garmin operates with a short window of support for its gear before it is orphaned as far as support goes.
Simrad has a bad rep for poor support in years gone by but I never see more current reference to that issue today.
Furuno has long had the good rep, but when I began window shopping a lot of the gear was a generation behind others. That has changed. The MFD now has a pretty slick interface, with the power to be fast and responsive. That is so long as you like an all-glass touch interface, and give up the hard buttons and knobs.
Simrad and Garmin have auto-routing functions in the autopilot. Furuno does not. The Simrad version beats Garmin in my book on this.
Some months ago Furuno came out with a transducer and MFD feature to allow you to create your own highly detailed bathymetric charts. Very impressive. Useful to build that in home waters but useless in moving forward in new areas as it is purely building data behind the boat.
It has been said here that you can build bathymetric charts using side scan in Simrad and Garmin but I have had a hard time tracking down info on that. Probably right, but I can't yet vet that and have yet to pose that issue to any dealer.
Simrad and Garmin have forward looking sonar. Furuno does not.
Simrad still has buttons and knobs integrated on some MFD models. All glass on the very largest screens. You can go all glass with Garmin and Simrad and have a buttons pad on the console. Furuno appears to just have hand-held remote button gadget.
Furuno was a generation behind, but now has in SOME ways leapfrogged ahead in MFD's. Simrad was ahead but it has now been some time since its current lineup was released and MAY be due for its own leapfrogging.
Everyone has radar options that is pretty darned good.
To the eye of this shopper its hard to call either one "best".
It is a lot like the old competition between Canon and Nikon. One will have an edge for a while, then the other. Hard to go wrong with either. But you still have to pick. And you will be living with what you pick for a lot of years.
Over the weekend I spent some time with a dealer trying to sort out my decisions on electronics for my new build of a Helmsman 38.
I'd love to report I have this all figured out. Not so. But I did pick up a few tidbits.
Cost: a full Garmin package will be cheapest. A comparable Simrad package will be about $2500 more. A comparable Furuno package will be about $2500 more than Simrad. If someone is getting down to brass tacks on a system, I would not go by this rule of thumb given to me by one dealer.
Availability: Furuno has some items unavailable for delivery until December 2023. Such as their 48 inch open array radar given as one example. But apparently this extends into a number of their items. And the point was made, don't count on 2023. For me, that probably throws Furnuno out of consideration. If I came to have a serious preference for the brand I think I would spec it out and check on specific item availability. But its clearly a brand of gear where if you want it, get it now and do not tarry.
Availability problems don't really extend into the other major brands.
Any new upgrade models for most brands would likely be announced at or just before the Ft. Lauderdale show.
Which led to an interesting point made by the dealer, in a very pointed fashion: if I had firm decision today, for a spring 2023 install, the dealer would not take my money today. Because, if I wanted Furuno they doubted they could deliver as promised. If the choice were a package of Simrad or Garmin, better to wait to see what happens with any new gear announcements around the show, and there are no availability issues with these two brands. So better to wait. A dealer who didn't want a check today was a refreshing change.
The dealer felt it unlikely that Simrad would be announcing any new lines of MFD's this year given their history of schedule for this sort of thing. Garmin wasn't mentioned in that regard, and no guess was offered.
Lately I have picked away a bit on transducers. Furuno has a nifty one that lets you build personal detailed bathy charts. Unfortunately by picking at this from several sources including this dealer, it just makes no sense for my purposes. It is designed to map fishing areas in some depth. But to map shallow areas, which would be my interest, the angles of the signals just wouldn't give you more than maybe 6 ft. of width to the run across an area, given how I'll have a full keel that will block the signals to one side. Add in there is no real compensation possibility for tides, any transducer angle fine tuning, in let's say a shallow 6ft depth area you could be saving data that is a narrow path and a couple of feet off in a 6 ft depth. Its a shame, but that's the reality.
Apparently there is a way to get Navionics on Simrad. The dealer struggled to bring it up on their demo unit, but I think I got how to view what is available from an online site. Because there are a number of different versions, seeing it exactly as it would display on an MFD is an issue. The dealer was quick to point out that for both Navionics and Cmap, what you see on the app isn't what you see on the MFD. It really became clear that if the chart package is important to you, you really really do need to see it on an MFD to get comfort that you will have what you expected when you laid down a lot of hard cash for a full package from a brand.
Others may know this, but I was able to confirm something about Furuno. It has bugged me that some stuff implies that you NEED TimeZero to get real functionality. Happily this isn't so.
I made the point on another thread but I'll repeat it here. Sionyx has a new fix low light camera, and the first demo unit is expected by the deal next week. They have seen some material on it that impresses them, especially for the price which is way under anything Flir has to offer. It apparently has some limited image stabilization that isn't as good as Flir, but helps. It is apparently very easy to install, with no black boxes between the unit and the MFD. Which led to a suggestion that backup cameras often do need a black box, and therefore one might well consider using a Sionyx for a backup camera even in full light usage.
The Siren alarm systems were said to be easily the best. The dealer would not recommend any of the others, and they ticked off a handful of other options that Siren beats.
All for what its worth.
Edits:
Simrad is built on Android. If you use Android it will feel natural. If not, maybe not so much. Simrad has more depth of choice in the settings, compared to Garmin, which is a good news / bad news thing. It can take some time with the manual to understand settings and get things dialed in they way you want it. Garmin is more plug and play in that regard. So the advice was, if you have no patience to tune the settings and read manuals, don't go Simrad. If you want that control and do have the patience, do lean Simrad.
And the advice was, be prepared to be disappointed with ALL customer support. For any new issues popping up from let's say a software update, the support staff are seeing it for the first time too.
And to just be prepared for software updates to see components lose connection, with the chance of a need to upgrade component motherboards when the new software isn't compatible with old components. Oh joy.
