Quote:
Originally Posted by HudosonForce50
I am leaning towards a Garmin 8616xsv.
To my understanding, Garmin plotters can only use Garmin maps-no third parties.
Is this a bad thing? Are Garmin maps hard to acquire? Everything is electronic/upload these days.
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Garmin recently acquired
Navionics and some of their MFDs can now use either Garmin or
Navionics charts. They have info on their website about that.
We have a prior model 7612xsv apparently from circa 2016 or so, and it only uses Garmin
charts. They charge $100/year for updates. (No update charge for the NOAA charts we use in our
Furuno MFD.) Updates are via ActiveCaptain, although for me that usually means download to an SD card (mini-SD, I think) which then lives in the MFD slot.
Garmin seems to introduce new models fairly quickly, so product support for older models might be in jeopardy faster. I can still get a chart update for our 7612xsv... so far...
We inherited the Garmin, with
radar and 235 Hz NMEA2000 DST... and some dead
Raymarine stuff (plotter,
transducer of some sort,
remote VHF speaker with
radio long gone)... and a working
Raymarine autopilot. We kept the Garmin stuff, replaced dead Ray stuff with
Furuno, and left the AP as a stand-alone. Works fine in "go straight" mode. I'm thinking now I might look into connecting the AP via NMEA0183 to the Furuno MFD, but that'll be "because I can" as opposed to "absolutely necessary."
FWIW, I prefer Furuno.
-Chris