Raymarine E 120

[Auspicious]

I'm quite happy with my E80. Before you settle on the E120, compare the power draw requirements of the two. If you're happy with the consumption of the E120 the added display area is wonderful.

[Inkwell]

I have changed my mind on the E120 and will be going with the C120. Less wattage to deal with and will not need all the extras on the E120 system. Defender and others have great prices with Raymarine offering a $ 450 rebate. Local marine electronic guy will handle the install. Thanks for all the input.

[Sandero]

The good and bad thing about both these units is that Raymarine issues firmware upgrades every now and again which can add more functionality... like AIS or XM weather overlay (with a receiver of course).

Not being an engineer it would seem that if they continue on this approach they might tweak it to even have a more intuitive user interface.

One thing I hate about the C series is how you can move your view on the screen. You obviously move the cursor (not a great feel IMO) and then to zoom you to the cursor location you have to press a soft key or else it zooms at the ship's location. There's a toggle feature, but whenever I use it... it seems to send the cursor BACK to the ship's position so I have to scroll again and then zoom. To me this a awkward and dumb.

All these commands and features are buried within layers of menus and not easy to find... at times. But when you have so much flexibility and only a few buttons... how else can you get to commands?

How about having the date/ time or lat lon position as the default name when you set a waypoint instead of wpt 1, wpt 2 ... ha?

Who designs these things?

jef
sv shiva

[shadow]

Very interesting thread and educational as well. Most of the people I know have the standard Raymarine stuff and for years when I wasn't serious about getting a boat of my own and just hanging out, I thought that there was only 1 supplier, Raymarine. So, it is obvious that Raymarine spends all of their money on marketing and sales. It also sounds like they spend the left over scraps of cash on R&D and QA.

Can anyone really give me which one is the best supplier for someone who plans on long extended stays if not live aboard cruising?? I am more then happy to pay a premium if it gives me the satisfaction of knowing that the equipment is very reliable and dependable. I am also aware that everyone has their own preference but I was curious if there is an industry standard that everyone knows is the best??

It sounds like Furuno is pretty tops.. Thanks again for your help and input.. Cheers

[Sandero]

My sense is that Garmin is very good, and Furuno is known for reliability. Northstar is high end pricey. Raymarine is a marketing machine...

jef
sv shiva

[madmariner]

He's right about the C versus E point.
Unless you need networking, the C Series is much cheaper.
I'm the editor of a boating magazine and we did a piece on this a while back. You can read it here:
Equipment: Electronics: Choosing Raymarine's C or E | MadMariner.com

[Terrylh]

Have just finished cruise from San Diego to Samoa, via Marquesas and various Pacific islands.
Have Raymarine E120 plotter, and it worked BUT
DO NOT LIKE NAVIONIC charts.
Probably OK in US, but problems in out of the way places. Called in at a small Atoll in the Tuamotus called Amanu, and the Navionics chart showed 2 main passes thru the reef. They were about 5 miles apart on the electronic chart, but looked very similar - names were slightly different.
Similarity raised my suspicions, and upshot was that one of them was non existent. I think they compiled the electronic chart from two different large scale paper charts and just patched the two different versions of the pass onto their electronic chart.
Then entering the island of Rapa I found that the paper chart has a correction for GPS positions - not uncommon for charts a bit off the beaten track. However when looking at the Navionics chart it became apparent that they had actually applied the correction - BUT had applied it in the wrong ditection so that the error was doubled. Had we not had the paper chart and followed the Navionics chart we would have ended up on the reef.
Actually the French islands are pretty well beaconed - but for you "red right returning" folks, remember that almost all of the rest of the world uses the opposite international system with GREEN right returning.
Incidentally some old (2000) CMap charts showed (correctly) only the one main pass into Amanu, and had not attempted to apply any correction to the Rapa chart - so it was only out by half as much as the Navionics one.
I personally prefer the format and appearance of CMap to Navionics - and in future would steer clear of Raymarine for that reason

[swagman]

Hi All,

I also think it is sensible to check out all available units before making any decision as to brand, but for what its worth, we've had both the E120 below and an E80 in cockpit for fours years now, covered 12,000 nautical miles, and not one issue. As an ex IT man I personally subcribe to the value in having integrated kit and I also like the Raymarine basic instruments and radios.

Personally speaking, I find Raymarine plotter controls very user friendly and their service (from UK) second to none.

I also find the navionics charts excellent - and I'm not sure where others are coming from - but we've single card charts covering sea areas 100's of miles across.

Re service.........we purchased a six year old yacht six years back which had been sadly neglected .

The Raymarine ST60 displays had been left exposed for several years in a very cold and wet climate, and from the day we fired them up (yes they still worked), they always suffered from condensation inside.

A Raymarine tekkie doing a freebie check prior to rally came up with one way to solve the problem for us. He replaced all four displays (including one control head) with new ones - FOC - compliments of Raymarine!! In UK terms - that was close to £1,500 in kit.

Thats what led me to install 100% Raymarine on the new boat and as stated - it's not let us down once.

So good luck with whatever you choose - but be sure to take a balanced view.

JOHN

[Roy M]

Hi folks, I just powered up my Raymarine E120 system a couple days ago. I must have done something wrong. Everything works. Very well. I've got Sirius weather, DSM30 depth, Interphase SE200c forward scanning sonar (wired into one of the four available video inputs on the E120 display), GPS, AIS, and the Raynav laptop interface. Also integrated is the ICOM VHF. The radar is the only thing left to install, after I pull the stick. So, to offer a slight bit of alternative viewpoint, I think it's a really cool system. I especially like the Navionics Platinum software. It's fun creating a custom page that simultaneously portrays the vector chart, 3D bathymetry, forward scanning sonar and bottom sounding images. It's sort of like flying in fog underwater.

[AnchorageGuy]

Roy, Real glad it is working for you NOW

[High Cotton]

I purchased my E80 at the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show last year (lowest prices) because I already had the RAYMARINE auto-pilot, wind and sailing instruments...... very easy install on a NAVPOD (with cut-out) just "plug and play"........

I've had NO service issues as reported by some previous posts, just luv the system!

[Roy M]

An update on my Raymarine E120 system, specifically, the Interphase SE 200C forward looking sonar: I started having some problems with the display of the sonar image - weird, lurching zig-zags at the top of the screen. After trying to eliminate noise sources, I called Interphase. I have enormous respect for those folks. The problem is simply that Raymarine's display was set up before the SE200 came out and didn't display enough colors. The good folks at Interphase sent me a replacement "black box" (actually, red) and the system is now functioning perfectly. They needed to switch software to conform to the Raytheon platform. Now, I'm using the system regularly, and even beginning to understand what it is telling me. Very cool.