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Old 29-03-2023, 15:59   #1
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Garmin vs Simrad Plotter

Hi all! I have bare bones equipment onboard and am getting ready to throw down.

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.

Is Simrad or some other company better, if so why?

They are all equally accurate, since the information is shared/common, is it not via government satellites?

Money isn’t my deciding platform-quality and reliability is. Also, I already have DatalineX wind/speed/depth + Simrad autopilot+ Raytheon radar-all of which are old but working.

I was thinking of replacing everything with one brand. Maybe keep the autopilot?

I’m all ears!
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Old 29-03-2023, 17:35   #2
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Re: Garmin vs Simrad Plotter

It is difficult to say one chart is more accurate than the other, but they often do not agree. They are not from government satellites. In most cases, from a government survey, some boat sailing along and taking soundings. These surveys might be quite old.(several decades) Then, cartography companies take this data, add to it and correct it, sometimes with information from users which might not be accurate.

Simrad and B&G are both the same company, and the chartplotters are similar but B&G has a few extras for sailors, and Simrad is geared towards motor vessels. So, if you have a sailing vessel, through B&G into the mix.
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Old 30-03-2023, 04:58   #3
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Re: Garmin vs Simrad Plotter

Quote:
Originally Posted by HudosonForce50 View Post
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.

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.

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