Quote:
Originally Posted by nightfighter
I also had the 188c, which I upgraded this year to a Raymarine A78, which I bought off of a member here. So here is my take on what you need to be aware of; The new units often have an internal antenna. The technology of the sonar, downscan and sidescan is what you are really upgrading. The downscan/chirp is very good and when displayed side by side with the basic sonar, you will realize how many ghost images we use to react to. I did not get the sidescan, but could easily make use of it. The sidescan is available with an upgrade of transducer. Transducer is the greatest variable for your cost, imo. I like the touch screen. As for the gps, mine has Navionics gold charts. Not impressed. Preferred the Garmin Bluecharts much more..... Don't know if the Navionics Platinum is worth $199 given my experience with their Gold charts. That said, I am still learning the unit's functions and variable settings. I really need to reach out to someone at Navionics to see if I am missing something in set up. I was expecting more detail. I was originally looking at Simrad, before Peter listed this unit in classifieds, and the entry price sealed the deal. If I were to do it again, I would probably go with Garmin. I am not missing the sidescan but would like to try it. Hope this helps.
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Yep agreed - I'd put it about this simply, if it's not a Garmin GPS it's inferior. I get around on a lot of different boats and lots of guys fall prey to other brands of GPS, not sure why - maybe they are cheaper when you get the big multi function unit or maybe the Garmin FF just isn't very good?
One boat I usually tuna fish on has a huge lowrance GPS and I'd love to rip the thing out of the dash and throw it out the window, the interfaces suck, it's hard to notice when you are getting off course, it's hard to plot out a drift and where to set an anchor. Always makes me shake my head thinking that I've got a 10 year old handheld that works better, we've actually used it instead.
Jon