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If you are doing your own rigging and wiring you will be much happier with the small size of the Furuno cables and cable ends, and the ease of interface. I have worked on all three, and used two of the three, and prefer the Furuno. As someone already stated; they have some of the best technical support. Any coincidence the USCG uses Furuno?
Furuno is top of the line commercial grade equipment, and you pay top dollar. Raymarine is cheaper, but the products have been flakier since Hungarian production began. Support is great for both. You get what you pay for in this world, marine electronics included. Be advised as what follows is relatively off topic and could be considered a soapbox anti-Garmin rant. I'm not fanboy for any company, I just like equipment works. So here it is.
Garmin is junk. They are a consumer electronics company (or were for that matter after watching their stock plummet 50%) and it shows up in the quality of internal and external components of their marine line. Their aviation equipment is top notch for their market, but with Smart Phones they've lost their automotive market which consisted of the majority of their cash flow. They've already postponed their xHD radars until Feb. which still will not happen, important people in the maritime division will lose their jobs to help absorb their losses, and their support and quality of product coming out of Garmintown, Taiwan will suffer. I don't see good things in the future for this company, I was never a fan of their products and the hype machine that followed it. Good riddance.
Furuno is top of the line commercial grade equipment, and you pay top dollar. Raymarine is cheaper, but the products have been flakier since Hungarian production began. Support is great for both. You get what you pay for in this world, marine electronics included. Be advised as what follows is relatively off topic and could be considered a soapbox anti-Garmin rant. I'm not fanboy for any company, I just like equipment works. So here it is.
Garmin is junk. They are a consumer electronics company (or were for that matter after watching their stock plummet 50%) and it shows up in the quality of internal and external components of their marine line. Their aviation equipment is top notch for their market, but with Smart Phones they've lost their automotive market which consisted of the majority of their cash flow. They've already postponed their xHD radars until Feb. which still will not happen, important people in the maritime division will lose their jobs to help absorb their losses, and their support and quality of product coming out of Garmintown, Taiwan will suffer. I don't see good things in the future for this company, I was never a fan of their products and the hype machine that followed it. Good riddance.
Yes, looks like they dropped $5 today, I wouldn't call that a plumet. And for the record, Garmin is running away with the Marine industry right now. The only downfall to this is, theirs not going to be much competition left for folks like us to choose from.
And if you check their website, it looks they can't hire people fast enough, as opposed tou your rant about people loosing jobs. LOL. This was really, a VERY funny post. Thanks for the humor!!
Birdie, a number of car navigation companies took a hit when Google announced it would be providing free mapping software ffor phones. Garmin fell from almost 38 to about 30.
Free is hard to compete with. Free and GOOD is very tough to sell against.
It's not the end of the world for handheld navi systems, but it will hurt sales, and that is a big piece of Garmins air supply.
but he is right that the Garmin marine gear is consumer grade. Nothing wrong with that if you are a consumer though.
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Terry Jason 35, Yanmar 370 hp, Lots of fun at a leisurely pace
Yes, looks like they dropped $5 today, I wouldn't call that a plumet. And for the record, Garmin is running away with the Marine industry right now. The only downfall to this is, theirs not going to be much competition left for folks like us to choose from.
And if you check their website, it looks they can't hire people fast enough, as opposed tou your rant about people loosing jobs. LOL. This was really, a VERY funny post. Thanks for the humor!!
I'm glad I could get a laugh out of you Birdie, but on a serious note:
Garmin can't hire people because they pay their employees minimum wage and with stock options. It doesn't help that Garmin USA is based out of Olathe Kansas, not exactly a big party town for the engineering crowd. And yes, a 15% drop in one day for a MAJOR company is a big deal, not to mention what happened to share prices last week.
More to the point and to avoid getting into an economics debate, Garmin will be around, and continue to provide cost-effective solutions for the small to mid-sized boat. However, how exactly does a company provide cost-effective solutions when cash flow is chopped in half? You cut your expenses in half. And selling their GMR18's for 5% over the cost of production isn't going to cut it. The marine division is not their most profitable, and you can already see the lack of R&D funds being allocated to the maritime market just by looking at what they've done over the past three years. What have they developed and put on the market? The GMI instruments? Software updates? They slapped a display on the TR-1 autopilot, I guess that counts. And what the hell is the 441/541 supposed to prove? That Garmin can swap out a processor and try to sell a 3 year old unit to the public? C'mon, they know better than that. Yes, the VHF300 was a nice idea, but they weren't the first to start working on an AIS/VHF, and they dumped a ton of money into developing it without even considering that Standard Horizon and Icom OWN the VHF market and will continue to do so. The only reason you see Raymarine VHF's is due to their OEM support, and Garmin isn't going on any OEM's. They even just lost Ranger to Raymarine!
My point after all this is that Garmin products right now are lackluster at best, and if you are going to own a boat, don't skimp because of the price point Garmin offers and relegate yourself to an inferior product. The horizon doesn't look so great for the company in my estimation, but we're all entitled to our opinions. In the meantime, I'm glad Alex is going with a Furuno system which he will be very happy with. It will work and help keep him from colliding at sea, provided he uses it right. That's the whole idea behind marine electronics, safety. I just wouldn't put my safety in the hands of a company who is cutting corners and providing a shoddy product with a shiny screen. That's all. To close, I'll leave this thread with one word to remind you where I'm coming from:
I'm glad I could get a laugh out of you Birdie, but on a serious note:
Garmin can't hire people because they pay their employees minimum wage and with stock options. It doesn't help that Garmin USA is based out of Olathe Kansas, not exactly a big party town for the engineering crowd. And yes, a 15% drop in one day for a MAJOR company is a big deal, not to mention what happened to share prices last week.
Again, nice try. Check Garmin's website, click on the JOBS link. There are a bunch of 100k+ jobs listed. Last I checked, 100k+ is not min wage.
And agin, if you look at the graph I linked to on Yahoo finace, you will see Garmins Stock is WAY up on the year. Electronics stock go up one day, down the next, and back up the next. You can't follow them on a daily watch, but I know you knew that already. The entire electonics sector went down, and the leaders (like Garmin) always lead the way, they lead up, and lead the way down. Not even a hickup if you ask me.
The marine division is not their most profitable, and you can already see the lack of R&D funds being allocated to the maritime market just by looking at what they've done over the past three years. What have they developed and put on the market? The GMI instruments? Software updates? They slapped a display on the TR-1 autopilot, I guess that counts.
Your getting even funnier!! You should get a show on the comedy chanel!!
What has Garmin done in the last 3 years? Oh, take over the entire recreational Marine industry by making some of the BEST products available, that's all. LOL.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NYC Wharf Rat
My point after all this is that Garmin products right now are lackluster at best, and if you are going to own a boat, don't skimp because of the price point Garmin offers and relegate yourself to an inferior product. The horizon doesn't look so great for the company in my estimation, ...
When I outfited my brand new Rampage last year (read: expensive high end boat), I didn't even think about the cost of the electronics. I researched the best products available, with the best support to go with them. After demoing the different units, it was not even a contest. And when I started, I has a strong interest in Raymarine from my last boat. I had never owned a Garmin product except for an 9 year old Rhino handheld GPS/FRS radio unit. Garmin was updating the software on that Rhino unit until it's 7th or 8th year. After selecting the products, I then set otu to get THOSE products as cheap as I could from the different vendors. So to this day, I have no idea if I paid more or less to get all the equipment/devices I needed by going with mostly Garmin. Cost was not an issue.
If it was cheaper, GREAT. But I could care less. What I got, is the best system available today. Will it be the best available tomorrow? Maybee not, who knows. But so far, nobody is even close.
Birdman, if it makes you feel a lot better to think you have "the best", that's great but you need to distinguish opinion from fact.
Garmin makes good equipment and the upper end of their product range has some very interesting features. They are very good at developing intuitive interfaces and devote a lot of thought to building products that can be integrated easily into a full system. I would not hesitate to recommend Garmin equipment to the average guy who wants a good system at a reasonable cost.
Once you venture into the realm of "best" for someone who is a serious fisherman and spends time offshore, your enthusiasm for Garmin hardware is a lot harder to justify and frankly the whole exercise is a bit silly. In fairness to them, Garmin does not really try to compete at the upper end of the market. For example, they did not offer large open arrays until recently and still don't have a 25kW unit comparable to the Furuno products. Garmin is going for the volume products in the middle range and they have done everyone a great service by making that category of product a lot better than it was before Garmin made their big push.
I do see from the picture of your boat that you have a Garmin radome. Go out someday with someone who has a new generation Furuno 4 or 6 foot open array and tell us afterwards if you still think your Garmin radar is "better." Then ask the guy with the Furuno stuff to crank up his FCV1150 sounder or NavNet sounder and tell us if you think your Garmin sounder is painting a better picture.
Sure, you can say it's not apples to apples because you shouldn't compare a big open array to a small dome or a pathetic little Garmin GSD box to a $5,000 Furuno sounder and of course you would be right -- but that does not change the fact that the Furuno equipment performs better. It may not be as good a value as your Garmin stuff in terms of performance versus cost, but no one who has experience with both sets of equipment and actually knows how to use it properly (tune the radar and sounder) would ever say the Garmin stuff is "better".
I don't have experience with the new Raymarine equipment so I have no idea how it performs but it is just a joke for someone to stand up with a straight face and proclaim that Garmin makes the best marine electronics.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Birdman
Your getting even funnier!! You should get a show on the comedy chanel!!
What has Garmin done in the last 3 years? Oh, take over the entire recreational Marine industry by making some of the BEST products available, that's all. LOL.
When I outfited my brand new Rampage last year (read: expensive high end boat), I didn't even think about the cost of the electronics. I researched the best products available, with the best support to go with them. After demoing the different units, it was not even a contest. And when I started, I has a strong interest in Raymarine from my last boat. I had never owned a Garmin product except for an 9 year old Rhino handheld GPS/FRS radio unit. Garmin was updating the software on that Rhino unit until it's 7th or 8th year. After selecting the products, I then set otu to get THOSE products as cheap as I could from the different vendors. So to this day, I have no idea if I paid more or less to get all the equipment/devices I needed by going with mostly Garmin. Cost was not an issue.
If it was cheaper, GREAT. But I could care less. What I got, is the best system available today. Will it be the best available tomorrow? Maybee not, who knows. But so far, nobody is even close.
Hmm, this pot needs a little more stirring and a lot more spice.
You say Garmin is a consumer Products company like that is a bad thing. It absolutely isn’t a bad thing, consumers need choice and having attractive units with good features at a reasonable price point is important.
So what does being “Consumer” grade even mean?
Well, to me, it’s a function of feature sets, reliability, and duty cycle. Consumer products simply aren’t expected to survive in the same environments as commercial duty equipment.
Customer support is key, as is the ability for the average person to professionally install and service the components.
In those regards, Garmin is a Consumer Grade provider. It’s high quality, but its not commercial grade.
And I’m fine with that.
I use my equipment a few times a week at most, and then it’s on for a max of 30 hours straight. I can get by with two weeks of downtime while some piece of my network goes back to Wisconsin for service.
Let’s face it. “Most” boaters only put something like 50-100 hours on their engines, and maybe twice that on their electronics. Even if I put 500 hours on my electronics a year, that would be an awful lot and probably would put me in the top 1% of recreational duty cycles.
Garmin gear is likely built for these duty cycles. Try to run one for 3000 hours a year, and you will be replacing a lot of components.
In terms of functions, they are following the Microsoft policy of providing 90% of what 85% of your target market needs/wants. They are going broad, not necessarily deep. There are plenty of examples of this. I’m not going to list them here.
So is it a bad thing? No, absolutely not.
What the units can’t do can be taken care of with compensating controls or just lived without. It is generally reliable, generally has the features and functions people need, is relatively easy to use, and comes in at a good price point.
But it isn’t the best AT ANYTHING. To say otherwise is just cognitive dissidence at work. And I own and am generally happy with my Garmin top end system.
This should get interesting.
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Terry Jason 35, Yanmar 370 hp, Lots of fun at a leisurely pace
Classic,
Just fyi. I did a VERY close comparison of the Raymarine 4' open array to the Garmin 24HD radom prior to buying it. This was on two boats, tied up together in the Great south bay. They both had similar sized displays, ~12". The Garmin was HD while the RM was not. The Garmin 24hd performed exactly the same as the RM array, at close range. By close range, I'm referring to 2 miles. We only had about 4 miles of real range in the bay, so could not test long range, and I didn't need that tested as I don't use radar very often normally for more than a couple miles. I'm 100% sure the open array would've performed better at a longer range. But at 2, 1 and 1/4 mile, you would be hard pressed to tell the difference. In comparison, they both BLEW away my old RM 2kw dome. The RM radar is the same, and just as good as the Furuno. There not a whole lotta difference.
The only thing to me that is opinion is what interface one likes better. The way I rate the user interface for a recreational marine unit, is ease of use. We are not rocket scientists going in 10,000' of water searchig for the missing Titanic. That said, Garmin wins hands down, absolutely no argument. I work on interfaces for a living, and can easily say, nobody is even close to Garmins (especially the ones I am are working on which are TERRIBLE. I'm not in marine industry).
Now, since they all have the same basic features and mostly work just fine. Garmin wins the race because they have the easiest interaface, and the best product and customer support. Done.
My Ex thinks that you have to buy the most expensive to get the best. That's where the "Ex" part comes in.
I was a COTR for large electronic procurements at a small Alphbet Agency in DC. We found that over-paying for high-end components was a criminal waste of the taxpayers' money, because the pace of development in the industry meant that every one of those devices would have to be replaced in a few years. So we went to off-the-shelf stuff. We found that for half the price of "safe choice" products we got exactly the same utility and reliablity. As a consequence, the IBMs and Hewlett Packards were forced back to the drawing boards to provide their traditional parameters at competitve prices. The net result was better equipment, greater reliablilty, more functionality at lower prices.
There will always be Gold Platers buying the most expensive stuff. Thats what big pockets do; its just easier to maintain bragging rights by pouring money on the fire. The old "nobody-got-fired-for-buying-IBM" mentality simply doesn't have to change in that market.
So there will always be a Furuno.
Does that mean that Garmin stuff doesn't hold up? Take a tour of a few professional fishermen. Watch the "Deadliest Catch". Can it be? is that a couple of very elderly Garmins in full view, happily doing their job long after they should have been retired to some "Old Chartplotter's Home"?
Get real. Its a poor craftsman who blames his tools. That means its a poor fisherman who has to have the latest and most expensive stuff! If you can't get the job done right with a Garmin, your problem isn't electronic.
__________________ If it ain't broke, I haven't played with it.
Well I should probably drop the matter at this point before this turns into one of those pointless shouting match threads. I don't begrudge anyone their opinion. This is supposed to be about having fun.
I iwll make two points in response to Birdman and Sandyda:
1) Comparing the radar at short range because that is what you do the most is hardly a basis for saying that the performance is comparable. It is just another way of saying that the Garmin dome is the best value for your application. That is very different from what you have asserted, which is that it is the "best" system. Best to me includes being able to resolve close targets at 4-6 miles, pick up birds at that kind of range, spot small targets, and all the other usual measures of radar performance. If you took your boat out side by side with a 4' Furuno open array to an area with greater range and more challenging targets, the difference in performance would be obvious -- which is not to say that the Furuno would be better for you or anyone else who does not need or want that level of performance.
2) The Furuno systems I am comparing are not "gold-plated" though certainly they do make some very high-end stuff. The difference in cost between a Garmin 5212 and 4' open array and a Furuno NavNvet 3D MFD12 and 4' array is about 20%. Not much in the context of a new offshore capable boat that might cost well over $100K or a whole lot more. Wanting to use good equipment does not mean someone is a pussy who can't catch fish the old-fashioned way. I can navigate with paper charts by dead reckoning and with a sextant and did it for many years. I fished for a good part of my life without even a simple depth finder. It's just like anything else -- people with skill do a better job with better tools.
Sorry for the Hijack, but I was just at the Ft Lauderdale Boat show in South Florida to pick out a new Chartploter. I had the intention of buying a Furuno unit as that is what I an replaceing in one of my boats. My other Boat has a Garmin unit that I like very much so I was interested in seeing there new acomplishments. I wound up purchasing a Raymarine unit becaue of the features,build quaility and especialy the talented technicians that were demoeing the units. The Garmin booth was kind of a joke, mostley geared toward low end consumer sales. I almost went Navnet 3D but felt I got what I needed and saved some money with Raymarine.
If Furuno is what the US Navy/Coast Guard and most of the commercial boats/ships use, it’s good enough for me. Most larger new boats, 50+ ft, either have Furuno or Raymarine
One of the reason I would go with Furuno is they still sell each application separately , not bundled, and they sell a full line that can be integrated including auto pilot, rudder indicator, weather, and communications. Garmin is still mostly small pleasure and do not offer a complete line for easy integrating. Rayathone/Raymarine use to be equal to Furuno 10+ years ago. 10+ years ago we went with Rayathone as parts and service was better in the PNW. In 10 years we have had 0 problems/problems with Rayathone. However, today I would probable go with Furuno.
I took out the 30 year old Rayathone that still worked as it dated the boat, so we need to replace with a back up radar. The new Broad Band short range radar looks interesting, but still to new of technology for me. I tend to stick with what has been proven over time. So I would rank Furuno, Raymarine and then Garmin.
Most of you are missing a key piece of criteria. Duty Cycle.
You can go to Ace Hardware and buy a lawn mower with all the features of a higher end honda or gravely unit. And if you compare them on a small piece of lawn they will all do a good job and it would be hard to tell the differences between them.
But try to use those mowers for a landscaping business, running them 18 hours a day for a year, and you would quickly find out what the differences are.
That is one of the key differences between consumer/recreational designs and commercial designs.
So for the guy who is going to use their electronics mostly on nice days for a total of 100 hours n a season, there won't be a huge difference between the three major brands. It will come down to which interface you "like" best, which features "you" use the most, and even how they look on "your" boat.
Fortunately for Garmin, the recreational/consumer market dwarfes the commercial market. They can get very big just selling to the guys who use their boats as condos or who take the occasional run out into the bay.
It's not a big deal for most people. Choose whatever units you want, I doubt you will be disappointed no matter what you choose.
But like airline travel where there will always be someone who had their luggage lost or treated rudely, there will always be someone who is bitter and resentful of how their electronics vendor treated them.
Don't worry, be happy.
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Terry Jason 35, Yanmar 370 hp, Lots of fun at a leisurely pace
Classic,
First, remember a BIG thing here (here being The Hull Truth). This is a recreational fishing forum for the most part. I have been boating for about 35 year, of that fishing recreationally only the last 10 or so (not including clamming in the summers while growing up for packet money). In all those years, I have never seen or found an application for Radar use with a range longer than 2-4 miles. Have I cranked up mine to 48, sure. Did I REALLY need to, nope. Weather is about the only reason to do it, to try and see a weather front coming in the distance, but that is a stretch, and ANY of the units can easily do it, your not looking for a small target.
Finding birds at a distance, MAYBE, for some real serious offshore guys. But even that I don't really buy. If you put your radar that long a range, with gain way up..., and look for birds with a nice powerful open array you just might ping some. BUT, you will never really will know if it's birds, or if its a whether bouy, or whether its a fishing boat.... It's really hard to tell the difference. Maybe a professional dragger out there every day can do it, I doubt 99 out of a 100 rec's like us can. I certainly can't. I find my stabilized binocs MUCH better at it. So in reality for most of us here, the long range stuff is of little value to useless. We use it for short range navigation in rain, fog and at night. In fact, me thinks in a couple years if not sooner, recreational radar will be absolete. We will be buying and installing FLIR systems instead once the cost comes down close to the cost of radom's. It's not that far off now. A fixed mount FLIR is about $5k, domes are $1k to $10k.
So the point to all this is, mentioning "professional fisherman" and "high end industrial" equipment and whether or not a manufacturer makes and sells them, is meaningless here. We are rec's, and looking for Recreational fishing equipment. And as noted, they all pretty much have the same features today, the difference being how easy or hard they are to access and operate those features. Most of us are dumb and lazy, mysef included. And the easier they are too use, the better they are for us.
Now all that said, as Sandy mentioned already, in todays world product longevity really isn't an issue. That is for 2 reason, the first being something new and better we will want to buy and play with will be out before the current stuff breaks. And secondly because most of the stuff, just doesn't break in the first place. With the advent of modern electronics (aka solid state + pc boards), there's just not much to "break" anymore. Everything is coated with waterproofing, the units are waterproof to start with, and use little power.
So in my mind, since the features are all similar and they all work pretty darn good, there is only one thing left to distinguish them, ergonomics, or ease of use.
If you want to compare professional equipment, great, go find a professinal fishing forum and good luck! I have no idea what they are using and/or why. Although I do know many of the small professional recreational fishing charts are starting to use Garmin. Take a walk down the docks in Montauk NY, 90% of the boats are charters. About 70% of them having nothing but RM on them, with a few older furuno systems (the older old school boats). The other 30% is now Garmin. 5 years ago, wouln't have found a Garmin unit on any of the 1000's of boats out there. If you did, it was a transient.
All that said, I can't wait to see the new Raymarine Hybrid system. THAT looks promising. A touchscreen with buttons, now we are getting somewhere!! I just hope they stay in bidness long enough to sell some so we can see them.
That radar antennae on your boat is a high energy magnetron tube that goes round and round, driven literally by a rubber band. All of you fancy tuouch screens are very prone to failure. Every solder joint - even the surface mounted ones - are failures waiting to happen. Every integrated circuit, and every line of code that runs them has a failure rate.
Stuff breaks all the time. I had to send my GSD30A in for replacement after just a couple of months of use. I'm pretty sure that was broken, so was Garmin.
Yes, stuff is more reliable than it once was. But stuff still breaks, and when you put it on a boat, it breaks a lot.
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Terry Jason 35, Yanmar 370 hp, Lots of fun at a leisurely pace
