As a suggestion, approach this with an eye towards your overall plan for redundancy. If you have a main chart plotter that uses a
Navionics chip and a hand-held that uses different cartography then you increase the overall cost.
I chose the
Garmin route and bought a GPSMAP 76c. Turns out that the new to us
boat came with a
Garmin 2010c unit. So under their
license agreement I can legally load both devices with a
single map area
purchase. I'm sure other vendors have similar arrangements.
For less than $250 the little 76c unit provides enough chart detail to use as a primary chart plotter IMHO. Take it anywhere, hard-mount it at the
helm with the external
power cord, and then use your
laptop for voyage planning on a bigger
screen. And oh yes - the
laptop is actually a 3rd chart plotter aboard. Costs only the BlueChart
software license and a USB
GPS receiver (dongle). I bought the USB data card programmer from Garmin and can load any memory cards for the 2010.
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