Quote:
Originally Posted by David M
I have a Furuno MFD Blackbox system onboard. It is clearly not "crap". It is a very reliable and professional system. It is also expensive.
Furuno's customer support is the best by far, which counts for a lot when you have questions or a problem.
The next best system would be a Garmin system which we have on our trailer boats at work. The Garmin units are used by scientists and their grad students (non-professional mariners) who are able to figure out how to use it and so far have not been able to break any of the units either. Garmin is also manufacturing really really nice avionics for aircraft....so they really know their stuff.
I would stay away from Raymarine. I have used their equipment plenty of times and it just is not as high of quality nor does it seem professional.
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Well near me there's a lot of inshore fishing fleet with Raymarine, so what does that prove. furuno trnds to installed by lots of fishing vessels as it targets that market wheras Ray, Garmin and
Simrad ( under navico) does not. That market looks for local equipped sales and
service agents, pays full
price with
service contracts etc. The leisure market is different. Also Furunos
commercial gear is different stuff to their leisure offerings. NAVNET3d is just a windows xP system in disguise , there's even a hard disk in many cases for gods sake.
Ratmarines stuff is in use by thousands and certainly in
Europe they have the lions share of the market. Equally they fair very well in surveys such as the
ARC.
Justify the " does not seem professional " comment. ( and then comment on garmins professionalism. ).
Equally you've completely forgotten
SIMRAD. A company with a
marine engineering much greater then Furuno. Their recent offerings have taken integration to new levels and the NSE NSO NSS series are very good
The fact is all these manufacturers produce compatible systems with little to choose from. Raymarine has probably the best and most complete integration, with SIMRAD close behind ( and possibly soon ahead) Garmin has the widest range of plotters and Furuno makes good
radar, but it's integration is somewhat behind the others.
Dave