Furuno vs. RayMarine Instruments

[svHyLyte]

Unfortunately, our 14 year old Standard Horizon instruments have begun to fail. Our wind indicator only works intermittently despite multiple fixes and now the screen on our depth meter is beginning to suffer "black screen" death. I did contact Standard Horizon but was informed that the Company is "...no longer in that line of business..." and no longer supports the equipment. So a change is in order.

My original thought was to switch to Furuno instruments as I know that the commercial boats use that equipment more often than not as it is quite robust. Re-running all the wiring, however, particularly to/through the mast is daunting and I don't look forward to the task. Recently, when I mentioned the situation to a slip neighbor, he suggested I look at the RayMarine wireless instruments as an alternative that, in the case of the wind instrument, eliminates the need for wiring entirely and, in the case of the depth/speed transducer requires only power to that and the display heads. (The Furuno system runs about $1750 verses the RayMarine system at about $2350 although I am somewhat less concerned about cost than I am reliability, endurance.)


I am wondering is anyone has used either of the foregoing systems and, if so, what are your impressions of either.

Thanks...

[Paul L]

I'm normally a big fan of Furuno equipment. Good design, good support and a reliable build. That said, I don't think their basic instruments, wind, speed and depth are anything special. I have the FI50x displays and they are decent and usable. The newer color displays that display any 2K data are superior. Have you looked at the ultrasonic wind sensors?

[svHyLyte]

Originally Posted by Paul L

I'm normally a big fan of Furuno equipment. Good design, good support and a reliable build. That said, I don't think their basic instruments, wind, speed and depth are anything special. I have the FI50x displays and they are decent and usable. The newer color displays that display any 2K data are superior. Have you looked at the ultrasonic wind sensors?

Paul--

Thanks for your response. The Furuno gear I was looking at is the F170DWS package that Defender has available for just under $1800. The Ultra-sonic sensor alone seems to be about $1300 and, frankly, is rather more than I really need although it does fit in the "Nice to Have" category quite well.

I don't know about you, but I've gotten to the point where I'm pretty disappointed in the alleged quality of the new technologies. The reliable serviceable life-spans of the "latest and greatest" gizmo's seems to be down to about 5 years. By comparison, the instruments on our former boat, installed in 1987, are reportedly still working fine. Supposedly, Furuno is the exception to this although I'd surely like to confirm that before dropping a few Boat Bucks.

The only reason I was considering the RayMarine gear as an alternative is for the advantage of wireless senors/transducers over having to re-run wiring which, unfortunately for us, would be torturous at best on our boat.

[Paul L]

Furunousa has a well deserved reputation for supporting units long after they stop selling them. Usually till parts are no longer available. Ray has reputation of obsoleting products as quickly as they can get the next version out. Usually with some built in noncompatibility and non-backward compatible design.

[yardie]

Before committing you might want to check the compatibility of the transducers. Our cat came originally with B&G instruments. But the transducers are made by Airmar. After a bit of research I found the wiring diagram from Airmar and was able to successfully connect the 2002 transducers to our 2015 Raymarine instruments. The only other work needed was the wind indicator. A straight up and down the mast job.

[Brewgyver]

Traditional ping depth transducers should be able to connect to any sounder module (or directly to some MFDs with internal spinners, like the Raymarine e7D). Newer depth technologies ("chirp" e.g.) not so much.


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