Chart plotter review in January YM

[flipper]

In The January YM, they review chart plotters under £500. The 'best buy' is the Digital Yacht Smarterchart 500. I'd never heard of it before but it looks quite interesting as it also has built in AIS and a 5" screen. At £499 you still have to add the C-Map charts for another £118 though, so still potentially my most expensive boaty purchase to date.

Anyone got one of these and have any comments?

Prior to reading the review I was planning on the SH CP180

Thanks
Patrick

 

[Elessar]

In The January YM, they review chart plotters under £500. The 'best buy' is the Digital Yacht Smarterchart 500. I'd never heard of it before but it looks quite interesting as it also has built in AIS and a 5" screen. At £499 you still have to add the C-Map charts for another £118 though, so still potentially my most expensive boaty purchase to date.

Anyone got one of these and have any comments?

Prior to reading the review I was planning on the SH CP180

Thanks
Patrick

I can't add much to the debate, but the digital yacht thing I do have (a GPS mushroom) was much cheaper than anything else on the market, does exactly what it is supposed to do and has done so without missing a beat.

 

[prv]

I had a play with the Digital Yacht plotter at the boat show, and didn't really like it. Felt a bit plasticky, like some of the cheap electronic gadgets you find on eBay made by anonymous Chinese companies. No reason to suppose it doesn't work well, though, and I have a Digital Yacht AIS I'm very happy with.

Pete

 

[yoda]

I think you have to consider the whole package cost and weigh that up against the likes of Garmin with built in charts. The AIS is a very useful addition IF you do the kind of sailing where it helps. I have a Garmin 551 which for local pottering and pilotage in and out of harbour is excellent and will still take an AIS input if required. Offshore I use the Garmin in the cockpit as an AIS screen and navigate on a laptop down below.

Yoda

 

[Twister_Ken]

In The January YM, they review chart plotters under £500. The 'best buy' is the Digital Yacht Smarterchart 500. I'd never heard of it before but it looks quite interesting as it also has built in AIS and a 5" screen. At £499 you still have to add the C-Map charts for another £118 though, so still potentially my most expensive boaty purchase to date.

Thanks
Patrick

Itza bit six of one, half dozen of t'other. With the Digital Yacht you have to add charts. With anything else you have to add AIS (if you want it). Total sums will probably come out within a pony either way.

 

[tidclacy]

I am investigating I Pad 2 with AIS and chart plotting software that you can download for it.

Is this the way to go or should I go for a traditional chart plotter?

 

[CPD]

This needs deep, long and meaningful discussion Patrick. Know a good pub ?.

 

[pvb]

In The January YM, they review chart plotters under £500. The 'best buy' is the Digital Yacht Smarterchart 500. I'd never heard of it before but it looks quite interesting as it also has built in AIS and a 5" screen. At £499 you still have to add the C-Map charts for another £118 though, so still potentially my most expensive boaty purchase to date.

I'm not sure, but might the Smarterchart 500 be a rebadged Seiwa SW501i with an AIS receiver added?

If so, the Seiwa is available for about £359, and you could add an AIS receiver for £99, making a total under £460.

Personally, I think a 5" low-definition screen isn't good enough for chartplotting. I'd save up a bit longer and get a Standard Horizon CP300i with a 7" screen and 5 times better definition.

 

[Bosun Higgs]

I am investigating I Pad 2 with AIS and chart plotting software that you can download for it.

Is this the way to go or should I go for a traditional chart plotter?

I have thought of going the same way if my plotter ever gives up. There are advantages to plotters - more rugged / waterproof, better designed for a limited task, lower power consumption, and more easily interfaced. But against that the IPad can do far more non nav things

At the moment I have available on board a lappy with plotter software and charts, paper charts and handheld gps, and a Raymarine plotter. The Raymarine gets used most of the time because I'm lazy. When the Raymarine went down ( £450 repair bill ) I used paper charts in preference to the lappy. If I'm ever in a tight nav situation I reach for the paper chart. So in a way I'm saying I prefer paper to a lappy / IPad type system. But that could just be personal because having taught the RYA shorebased courses, I am more comfortable with paper and pencil.

 

[Jaramaz]

plotting ...

Smarterchart ....

1) it is ugly
2) seems to be made for mobos, not for sailing
3) display resolution is not acceptable

Otherwise it is OK. Price is OK, specifications is OK, but 50 reciever channels is an exaggeration, hardly beliveable.

iPod, lap-tops, and others are not for the same use as a plotter. They are all fun, can be used as last reserve, but not for continous use in the cock-pit.

/J

 

[Norman_E]

All except the Lowrance plotter in that review had only 240 x 330 pixel screen resolution. Pehaps the issue here is the artificial cut off point of £500. It would make more sense to review 5 inch screen plotters without that cut off. Alternatively set a higher limit. Another £50 or so would have included the Standard Horizon CP300i with a bigger high resolution screen.

 

[pvb]

Another £50 or so would have included the Standard Horizon CP300i with a bigger high resolution screen.

Quite right. People don't understand the importance of screen resolution until they've struggled to work with a low-res plotter. The SH 300i has 5 times as many pixels as the SH 180 or the Smarterchart 500 - far easier to work with.

 

[Kerenza]

Been round this loop myself.
Lowrance on the helm which is good and reliable, expensive to update and fixed permanently so I can't work offline.
However as most of my life revolves around computers I started to use a laptop with Neptune planner - clunky but powerful, good interface with all the other instruments, admiralty charts, but still no use in the cockpit.
Moved to iPad with Navionics HD which is worth it's weight in gold but you can't see it in the daylight, nowhere near as powerful as Neptune for planning And just too delicate.
Tried a Panasonic toughbook but also poor in daylight.
I have on order (2 months now) a Panasonic H2 field, which will hopefully tick all the boxes. Large HD screen, portable and choice of planning / plotting programmes, with easy wireless interface with on board instruments. And waterproof!

HNY but don't go sailing Tuesday!

 

[doug748]

Anyone got one of these and have any comments?

Thanks
Patrick

Well. It all depends on what you want. Not very helpful, I know, but stick with me.

Big, high resolution screens are nice but I guess most of us use a plotter as a coastal aid so they are not vital. High pixel count makes itself felt in text, rather than the chart itself. Big screens are fine if you really want to navigate but they need extra power and get in the way on a small boat – particularly if you mount them in the cockpit. So 5 inch lower resolution screens, as reviewed, are perfectly practical for the pilotage most of us use them for. Not outstanding, but usable. Backed up by charts, which many will prefer for planning anyway.

I found the review oddly uneven though.
The gormless “features” that nobody ever seems to use, are dammed on one unit and seem to be praised on another. From what could be deduced from the text you might go for the Lowrance unit. It is tricky to set up routes but if you are an unashamed “go to” navigator that is no matter. The screen is higher resolution and this is great if you can see it. A dull screen will be useless, whatever it's resolution, if mounted in the outdoors. Armchair navigation below decks will be fine. The Digital Yacht unit was said to be “twice as bright” and the man had a scientific gadget as well. But twice as bright as what? I guess it must beat all the rest by that margin. If correct, this is the real trump card of the Digital Yacht plotter.

I have a Digital Yacht AIS myself. It's main drawbacks, as I see them, are not mentioned in the review. This may be because all the other units have the same or similar niggles, I don't have enough experience to know. However: Firstly there is a feature which opens up the chart in advance of the moving boat, thus making best use of the screen. Great offshore or for a motor boat, annoying in a tacking, coasting sail boat. You can't switch it off. Secondly ,if you move the cursor to force the screen into a more suitable view, the information boxes pop up at the top and get in the way, only flipping out of the way to left and right rather than flipping to the bottom. Another matter are the course information screens which are not as configurable as I would like, but then again, I am used to the Garmin Map76 which is paragon of its type.
I can confirm that the screen really is sunlight viewable. The AIS works fine with a simple 3 quid telescopic aerial directly mounted to the back. Thus the unit is self contained and only needs a power plug for the whole issue to be moved from below to above decks. One little bonus has been the back up form Digital Yacht who actually seemed interested in my questions and answered one email within minutes.

After all that. If you are mounting the plotter below deck and don't need the built in AIS, I think the Lowrance would be very worth looking at, the SH if you prefer landscape screens

I wish I could design my own, low power, high resolution,proper graphic AIS, bright, black and white, square screen, high speed redraw, configurable screen, no daft features; Owd Codgers Plotter.
Heigh Ho.

 

[Scotty_Tradewind]

http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=272373
from post 44

ref: I cannot believe that the Standard Horizon 300i cannot be the best value plotter for less than £500

 

[brians]

A poor test

It was a very poor test compared to tests by PBO and Sailing Today in the last month or so.

It is also interesting that the same test, identical wording, is included in the current issue of Motor Boats Monthly BUT that the conclusion was different. MBM concluded three of the units were more or less equal.

Digital Yacht is I believe owned by or closely associated to MES Ltd, a big advertiser in YM.

 

[chrishelen]

Another vote for the standard horizon, I got mine this time last year from force 4 and they threw in the UK charts free of charge.

 

[pvb]

I've said it before, all "test reports" in boaty mags are fundamentally flawed. Their only purpose is to fill the pages in between the ads.

 

[RobF]

I've said it before, all "test reports" in boaty mags are fundamentally flawed. Their only purpose is to fill the pages in between the ads.

I think that's a bit cynical, although I do concede that Yachting magazines are a commercial venture and their purpose is to make profits for the publishing company (IPC in this instance).

I did email YM about the Test Report as I thought it was a bit odd to have chart plotters for sub £500 but then note that most of the plotters didn't have charts included. A chart plotter without charts doesn't strike me as being a particularly useful piece of equipment! It would have been much better to have set the ceiling at £650 and include the cheapest charts available. This would have opened up some other contenders, including the Raymarine and the Garmin 556.

 

[bignick]

I don't quite get the test I'm afraid. Why on earth would they set a price limit and not include the charts in it? Many small chartplotters are available with charts included in the manufacturer's price, which would give a much more valid comparison. Completely pointless to set a limit on a product which is incomplete and couldn't be used as specified as you'd need to buy something else to make it work.

Rant over...

On the plus side it does make the Garmin look very good value.