Vesper Cortex: An Unpaid Review

[SomeGuyInaShirt]

Bought my Vesper Cortex for $2300 up in Canada in 2023 and sailed with it around British Columbia for the summer before heading down to the Sea of Cortez. It's only been around 9 months since installing it but I've used it daily.

Short version: don't buy it

Long version:

The actual AIS function works well...mostly. Sometimes vessels appear out of nowhere and disappear too but presumably this is just because they are deemed to be a non issue. I've never been caught off-guard by any vessels due to the unit's shortcomings.

I also like the anchor watch feature. It wakes you up if you drag anchor and it's very precise, it even shows the orientation of your vessel rather than a simple dot. It will also show other boats in the vicinity if in a very packed anchorage.

The radio, however, is absolute garbage. Briefly, there had been a squelch capability but more recent software updates did away with it so you have to listen to every radio transmission on a given channel no matter how distant and garbled and my antenna is only about 38 feet high! It basically means you won't be monitoring the radio using the Cortex. I typically use a cheap handheld unit I bought ages ago. The cordless handset's battery life is terrible, it doesn't even last ten hours and the charging cradle is cheap and flimsy and periodically doesn't work. The Man Overboard button is way too easy to press accidentally and I think it even caused an emergency message to be broadcast without me deliberately sending it. Not sure but after that incident I was shadowed by the Mexican coast guard for 50 miles so I'm guessing they heard about it. My Spanish is too rudimentary to understand all the radio chatter here.

The handset lights behind the buttons can't be shut off without shutting off the whole unit so at night when you're trying to sleep the lights will burn through your eyelids. Same with the base unit; too bright. There's more but that's enough fir now. You pay big bucks for an all in one unit but the VHF portion of the Cortex is so useless you might as well not even have it. No bueno!

[Mal Reynolds]

Originally Posted by SomeGuyInaShirt

Bought my Vesper Cortex for $2300 up in Canada in 2023 and sailed with it around British Columbia for the summer before heading down to the Sea of Cortez. It's only been around 9 months since installing it but I've used it daily.

Short version: don't buy it

Long version:

The actual AIS function works well...mostly. Sometimes vessels appear out of nowhere and disappear too but presumably this is just because they are deemed to be a non issue. I've never been caught off-guard by any vessels due to the unit's shortcomings.

I also like the anchor watch feature. It wakes you up if you drag anchor and it's very precise, it even shows the orientation of your vessel rather than a simple dot. It will also show other boats in the vicinity if in a very packed anchorage.

The radio, however, is absolute garbage. Briefly, there had been a squelch capability but more recent software updates did away with it so you have to listen to every radio transmission on a given channel no matter how distant and garbled and my antenna is only about 38 feet high! It basically means you won't be monitoring the radio using the Cortex. I typically use a cheap handheld unit I bought ages ago. The cordless handset's battery life is terrible, it doesn't even last ten hours and the charging cradle is cheap and flimsy and periodically doesn't work. The Man Overboard button is way too easy to press accidentally and I think it even caused an emergency message to be broadcast without me deliberately sending it. Not sure but after that incident I was shadowed by the Mexican coast guard for 50 miles so I'm guessing they heard about it. My Spanish is too rudimentary to understand all the radio chatter here.

The handset lights behind the buttons can't be shut off without shutting off the whole unit so at night when you're trying to sleep the lights will burn through your eyelids. Same with the base unit; too bright. There's more but that's enough fir now. You pay big bucks for an all in one unit but the VHF portion of the Cortex is so useless you might as well not even have it. No bueno!

Thanks for this review. Very helpful for those of us looking at things. Seems to mirror what we read on Panbo: https://panbo.com/vesper-cortex-upda...ing-bugs-more/ After some years the comment section is still going and full of complaints. Garmin just can't seem to get it going.

That said, I did just buy the M1 version for AIS and monitoring only. I've been a Vesper AIS fan. About the same price as any other AIS SOTDMA transponder with monitoring thrown in. We will see.

And yes, only commercial grade Icom VHF for my boat. M605. M604 as backup.

[s/v Jedi]

Yes, they had all sorts of trouble with the squelch and simply removed it as it couldn’t be fixed.

Also, there is a delay in the digital audio processing.

Their anchor watch has always been the best feature but nowadays there are very good apps for a smartphone which is why I now recommend the basic models of sotdma AIS transceivers (Amec etc.)

[chris in SG]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Their anchor watch has always been the best feature but nowadays there are very good apps for a smartphone which is why I now recommend the basic models of sotdma AIS transceivers (Amec etc.)

I hate equipment that relies on smartphone availability, although it's more economical to avoid separate fixed displays. I should try to adapt to a dedicated smartphone which is always connected to bluetooth and Vesper wifi and always charging. My favourite piece of equipment is Vesper Vision 2 which I use almost exclusively for the anchor watch feature, with an extra-loud external alarm. This won't last forever and, in fact, it recently developed a 'dead-spot' on the touch screen exactly where you choose between anchoring and passage-making.

I can see from the Vesper/Garmin blurb that the same anchor-watch software was carried over to Cortex, but it would be difficult to justify purchase for this alone.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by chris in SG

I hate equipment that relies on smartphone availability, although it's more economical to avoid separate fixed displays. I should try to adapt to a dedicated smartphone which is always connected to bluetooth and Vesper wifi and always charging. My favourite piece of equipment is Vesper Vision 2 which I use almost exclusively for the anchor watch feature, with an extra-loud external alarm. This won't last forever and, in fact, it recently developed a 'dead-spot' on the touch screen exactly where you choose between anchoring and passage-making.

I can see from the Vesper/Garmin blurb that the same anchor-watch software was carried over to Cortex, but it would be difficult to justify purchase for this alone.

I am talking about smartphone apps that need no other equipment to maintain anchor watch. I admit that I feed it nmea over wifi but when I test with it’s internal gnss it works just as well. And some of those apps are free.

While these apps aren’t necessarily better than the anchor watch developed by Vesper, they do at least match it. The reason that the Vesper anchor watch was so successful is that you could switch off all other electronics and it would still keep a reliable anchor watch. But now a smartphone or tablet can do so as well.

[Jim Cate]

^^^^

Nick, which app have you found best? Some that I've looked at were not very good.

Our Vesper Vision has died and there is no equivalent unit on the market. Damn Garmin...

Jim

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

^^^^

Nick, which app have you found best? Some that I've looked at were not very good.

Our Vesper Vision has died and there is no equivalent unit on the market. Damn Garmin...

Jim

Right now I am impressed by Aqua Map and it’s anchor alarm feature so that is the one I use now.

Before that I used this one which is very good as well:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchor...t/id1292028990

[flightlead404]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Right now I am impressed by Aqua Map and it’s anchor alarm feature so that is the one I use now.

Before that I used this one which is very good as well:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchor...t/id1292028990

Big fan of aqua map and its anchor alarm feature as well. I like the track it lays out so you can see your swing. I do notice I loose than on the occasion it carps out, but that could be my 10yr old ipad.

supposedly there's now a way to share that position via your aqua map account but I only tried once and couldn't figure it out

[Sabado]

We've been using the vesper cortex since its release and it has had a ton of issues. That is, until now. With the latest firmware, it's been working very well, including the auto AND manual squelch. The handhelds and charging cradles are very delicate though.

[znep]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Yes, they had all sorts of trouble with the squelch and simply removed it as it couldn’t be fixed.

Also, there is a delay in the digital audio processing.

Their anchor watch has always been the best feature but nowadays there are very good apps for a smartphone which is why I now recommend the basic models of sotdma AIS transceivers (Amec etc.)

Note that when they removed the more or less useless squelch setting they did add per channel squelch in v2.0. It is a lot better than nothing but still infuriating sometimes because it only lets you adjust within the range of signals received already for some silly reason. Some broadcast channels like weather radio sometimes come in with a sinusoidal strength over a several minute period due to some oddity of the radio which makes for a frustrating experience both for trying to listen to them and trying to get them left out from scanning.

The audio delay is also quite annoying, it results in the handset being out of sync with a speaker directly attached to the hub and also out of sync with other radios. That and the fact they don't let you disable scanning 16 renders the scanning features much less useful.

The recording and playback features they finally added in v2.0 are technically very nice but the UX makes them almost unusable.


Ever since I got it nothing will stop my hub from occasionally hanging and needing a power cycle. Vesper/Garmin kept blaming the power supply or saying the next firmware update would fix it, then support disappeared for a while after the acquisition and now they tell me the only option is to pay $700 for an out of warranty replacement with zero guarantee that will fix it. No thanks.

[shimari]

Originally Posted by znep

...

Ever since I got it nothing will stop my hub from occasionally hanging and needing a power cycle. Vesper/Garmin kept blaming the power supply or saying the next firmware update would fix it, then support disappeared for a while after the acquisition and now they tell me the only option is to pay $700 for an out of warranty replacement with zero guarantee that will fix it. No thanks.

Thanks for mentioning that. I've had the same problem this winter. It happens randomly: some times after 24 hrs some times after days. Sort of defeats the monitoring aspects. Garmin wants me to do a factory reset, and I've not had the time. Feel free to PM me and you can add my ticket number to yours if you like.

I leave it off now, and use Tailscale and SignalK for monitoring.

[znep]

Originally Posted by shimari

Thanks for mentioning that. I've had the same problem this winter. It happens randomly: some times after 24 hrs some times after days. Sort of defeats the monitoring aspects. Garmin wants me to do a factory reset, and I've not had the time. Feel free to PM me and you can add my ticket number to yours if you like.

I leave it off now, and use Tailscale and SignalK for monitoring.

Thanks, I'm over trying to deal with Garmin support for now.

My current solution is to power it via a Shelly Plus 1 so I can reset it remotely, but that isn't a great solution because:

1. The shelly isn't that reliable and you would want to add a bypass switch or be comfortable rewiring it on the fly if it breaks
2. It depends on internet access or being on the boat network, although you should be able to program the Shelly to detect the problem and power cycle automatically without internet. I haven't tried that yet.
3. The Plus 1 isn't rated for an 12v system with charging voltages (spec is 12 VDC ±10%). The Shelly Plus Uni is rated for 9-28 VDC but can only switch 250 mA directly so you'd need to feed another relay.

Interestingly the hub hangs much less often when out cruising in more remote areas with little radio traffic even though it is then subject to a less stable power supply.

Vesper support told me long ago:

You need to be able to have 25 watt transmission carried over the connection. If it drops off too low- the pod will try to reboot, but sometimes the capacitors do not discharge completely if the power supply is a very fast interruption. And the reboot gets stuck.

Not too sure what to make of that other than "bad hardware design", especially given it hangs when only transmitting AIS which isn't 25w.

[shimari]

Interesting - I was going to wire in a Shelly 1 plus. I went the Signalk route instead.

I just looked at the Cortex web page at Garmin and it indicates that security updates are only available until 2024-01-17. Hopefully, it's just a failure to update the web page. But, I'm wondering if they're going to kill the product now that they took Vesper out of the game.

[SomeGuyInaShirt]

Originally Posted by Sabado

We've been using the vesper cortex since its release and it has had a ton of issues. That is, until now. With the latest firmware, it's been working very well, including the auto AND manual squelch. The handhelds and charging cradles are very delicate though.

Thanks for this, I'll have to try to update although I'm at the end of my trip so kind of late. Maybe I'll keep this thing after all.

[Jim Cate]

But, I'm wondering if they're going to kill the product now that they took Vesper out of the game.

Would not be surprising, for this is normal for Garmin with "troublesome" products.

Their avionics products must be better designed and better supported...

Jim