Furuno vs. Northstar - The Hull Truth

Buck Wild · 01-02-2004, 08:47 AM

Been looking a electronics and was having a complete Furuno packaged priced. The salesman says at the cost of Furuno you should really look at the Northstar products. I just blew him off due to always hearing Northstar cost so much.

Can anyone commment on just how much higer the Northstar products cost and if they are worth the extra cost? The Northstar does have a great feature with its sounder being able to replay your sounder info for the day with your GPS data. Nice for going back and looking for productive bottom structure.

I want to get a GPS/charplotter, sounder, radar, and two displays.

Marlintini · 01-02-2004, 03:20 PM

Get the best of both worlds ...

Northstar 6000i plotter.
NavNet radar w/ a BBFF network sounder.

Demo · 01-02-2004, 03:57 PM

i bought the northstar 958 waas color last year...awsome machine..big screen, think 10.5 inches....I also got the ns 490 echosounder built in to it...I opted to have a seperate radar, but could have had it with 958 system...I got the ra41 simrad....the northstar unit is tops in my book..so easy to use, and the fishfinder color and effectiveness is impressive...It also has a video screen built into it..so you can have 3 screens on at once...i wanted a seperate radar, just incase...I think i payed around 4500 for the 958..extra 1200 for the echo sounder...480 for the transducer...its expensive northstar, but to me worth every penny, when i can touch buttons without getting the manual out to figure out a complicated machine.

flounder1979 · 01-02-2004, 05:45 PM

I just installed both the furuno 1943c with the bbff unit and the nothstar 6000i with sounder unit on a new 2004 32 topaz. The northstar blows the furuno away in the chartplotting catagory. But the furuno is far superior in the radar and depth finding unit. Northstar uses koden radar guts for there units. Koden has always had a good reputation. Theprices diffrence was like when you add radar to the northstar unit it was alittle over $8k for the full unit including radar and ff. I had the navnet on my previous boat and loved it except the chartploter. Very slow. So now i have the best of both worlds with the both units

Buck Wild · 01-02-2004, 06:22 PM

Thanks Flounder. I heard Furuno sped up their chartplotters...did you find this to be the case with your newer Furuno? I would have to say that I can make on a Furuno's chartplotter since I have been using their all-in-one 1650 unit for three years. I want a stud radar for locating birds and a good depth sounder. Sounds like the Furuno might be a better match for my needs.

Is the biggest/only difference in the chartplotters speed?

RiptideCharters · 01-02-2004, 07:24 PM

I just got a Furuno 1833C and have been playing with it the last few days. The re-draw is a bit slower than I've seen in other units. It should not be an issue in real world use, but in the Simulator when scrolling around large areas it's not as smooth as I'd like. As for everything else, it's awesome. 10.4" of bright color screen. It does everything, but the manual looks like a NYC phone book. Hoping ot have the basics down solid by the time our season rolls around. For $4350 it was well worth it.

Good Luck,

Capt. Terry Nugent
Riptide Charters

Marlintini · 01-02-2004, 08:39 PM

No one can match the speed of Northstar when it comes to chartplotters. The redraw is almost instantaneous. And the ease of use is great!.
You can't beat the value($) and quality of the Furuno radars compared to N* or Simrad (I haven't compared to Raymarine because my layout calls for a landscape type screen). It goes without saying Furuno makes the best sounders on the market.
I went with the 10" N* 6000i plotter, the Furuno 10" NavNet 1943C radar w/BBFF sounder and a NavNet 1700C in the tower.

Side note... the Furuno Navionics chartplotters were much faster than the C-Map based units. This has been corrected and the speed of both platforms is similar.... It still does not compare to the N*.
I went with the 6000i and the NavNet 1943C

catmandu · 01-03-2004, 07:17 AM

Buck Wild

I also want the bird finding capability of radar. Don't look at anything less than 6kw (1943c). I'm looking at the 1953c (12kw).

flounder1979 · 01-03-2004, 09:20 AM

Marlin you are correct about the speeds of the chart systems for the furuno. I had the 1833c in my regulator and it was slow as molasses when it came to redraw with c-map. I went with c-map again only because the charts are much more detalied, at least i think so . But you can not beat the n* for chartplotting. Fishfinding is not bad though.