Garmin vs Raymarine quick quality comparison

[autumnbreeze27]

Recently decided to replace the Garmin Echo 100 I had on our dinghy with a Raymarine Dragonfly 4 Pro.

The Garmin was just a depth sounder. It has two plugs at the back, one for power, the other for the transducer. I had issues with corrosion in the plugs, if the power cable wasn't just right, it wouldn't power up. Lately the temp gauge became 20-30 degrees F off, which I'm guessing may have been a corrosion issue as well. It was installed for about 1.5 years, and kept on the dinghy in the elements after the cables became unreliable.

I figured it would die completely as soon as we left for Mexico, so I decided to replace it with the Raymarine unit. The raymarine unit has GPS as well as the fancy new see underwater sonar. I figured if I was somewhere sketchy I could launch the dinghy and check out the anchorage before bringing the mother ship in.

Enough background, here's the real meat of the post. During the install I was surprised to discover that the Garmin unit came with tinned wires and a fuse, where as the raymarine wires are copper and the fuse you must supply yourself. The fuse isn't that big of a deal, but not using tinned wire? I was happy to see that the Raymarine only had one connector, and it was big and beefy, so hopefully it will hold up in the elements better than the Garmin.

[northoceanbeach]

It's tough, they are close in my mind. Money no object, garmin. Because certain things like autopilots they just don't have an inexpensive version of. Their cheapest for a boost under thirty feet is $3000. Where Raymarine has them for as low as $500.

But the main thing is to use n2k, it's a lot easier that way, I don't know why Raymarine came up with their own, it's pretty good, but there should just be one standard and that is n2k.

But it's hard. Raymarine does have some really good stuff and it's cheaper. I went with Raymarine, I don't regret I did. I guess it's just that I feel that garmin is a bit better quality.