Comparing Standard Horizon GX2100 with its peers

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MiracleMaud

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We are considering the Standard Horizon GX2100 with a RAM3 extension as an imminent purchase.

Does anyone know of anywhere I can find an objective comparison of the GX2100 and its peers, based on functionality, performance, quality, fitting, ease of use, and of course price?

If anyone has feedback on the GX2100 we would be interested to listen to it, including from those who rejected this unit for some reason.

Thanks in anticipation.
 
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MiracleMaud said:
We are considering the Standard Horizon GX2100 with a RAM3 extension as an imminent purchase.

Does anyone know of anywhere I can find an objective comparison of the GX2100 and its peers, based on functionality, performance, quality, fitting, ease of use, and of course price?

If anyone has feedback on the GX2100 we would be interested to listen to it.Thanks in anticipation.
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I assume you mean the GX 2100E which has inbuilt AIS.

I have had one for 8 months now, it works very well and easy to use, the AIS display is small but I purchased the Radio to go with a Standard Horizon 300i plotter and they work brillient together and then you find the benifit of the AIS.

The AIS range set on the radio I find best is 10 mile but it does go further (but why), the radio is clear both in speech and recieving yes expensive but good.

I bought mine here http://www.marinechandlery.com/elec...0e-fixed-dsc-radio-with-integral-ais-receiver at £285 plus plotter £520.

Quality in build is what you have paid for PLUS the back up from SH UK is excellant.

Also may be of interest to note the SH 330i plotter has built in aerial, and I have found reception to be excellant

Mike
 
I installed mine last year, very easy and a couple of queries I had were answered by SH support.
It seems to work very well.

Programming of some of the features is not intuitive and recourse is required to the manual.

The AIS screen is pretty poor, constrained by size, but fed into plotter It is very good.

When I purchased the price seemed to be very keen and the built in AIS made the decision easy. Whilst shopping around the cheapest supplier for the radio was not the cheapest for the mic so I sourced it from a different dealer.

Cant comment on the mic as I haven't installed it yet but feedback on it seems to be very favourable.

Agree with every thing that Caer Ufa says, the radio twinned with the plotter is an excellent tool.
 
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I'm not sure there are any "peers" - the combination of the integrated AIS and the functional remote at that price is pretty much unbeatable (it is on my shopping list too :) )
 
I had one on Pegasus. Worked extremely well. AIS was very helpful during transits between Majorca and Barcelona. Godsend at night.

Interestingly, I got HUGE range out of mine. 85 nm with Toulon Coast Guard one night. Gave them a position report; they thanked me too.

I would buy another 2100E.

GL
 
I have bought mine which was admittedly one of the first being sold in Europe (they were offered on a chandler web site but they had not yet type approval, which they obtained a few weeks later).
Very happy with its features.

I cannot praise highly enough SH customer service (in particular M.Ruddy), I had a minor problem (which I later discovered was due to other instruments I connected to the radio) just before my transat, they sent me a replacement radio before I even sent mine back for checking (then it appeared the radio was perfectly ok).

The "position report" feature is quite useful too, and not too often found in other radios.



"Peers" might be the Radio Ocean/Navicom similar integrated VHF+AIS sets, they also usually have good reports from users.
 
We installed one of these sets at the beginning of 2012. It's great. I like it almost as much as the old Sailor VHF with the big mechanical dial and the telephone handset. It's all been downhill since then.
 
MiracleMaud said:
More encouragement, thanks. Does anyone dislike this unit?
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I'm afraid I can't help you there. This is the third season with ours and it is excellent. Like others have said , the AIS has been really good and the range is also impressive. Very happy to recommend it.
 
MiracleMaud said:
More encouragement, thanks. Does anyone dislike this unit?
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I don't dislike it, but it's a shame that Standard Horizon don't market the much better GX2150 version in the UK. This will accept GPS data at 38400baud, and output DSC data at 38400baud as well as AIS data, so it's ideal for those plotters which only have one NMEA port (mainly Raymarine and Lowrance models). If I could get the 2150 version, I'd buy it.
 
The one missing feature when linking a GX2100e to a CP series plotter is the ability to pull the MMSI of a vessel identified by AIS on the plotter over the the VHF in order to call it. As it stands, if the VHF isn't in AIS mode (and why would it be since you have a more useful AIS display on the plotter), you have to switch the VHF display to the appropriate mode, match up the MMSI of interest between plotter and radio, then make the call. I guess it's just beyond the scope of NMEA to provide such a facility.
 
I have the RAM mike connevcted to a GX3000E. Installed in 2009, It is my best bit of kit from that year. I no longer bother with a handheld in the cockpit, and you can control virtually all functions from the Remote Mike.
Sorry, can't think of any downsides except the handheld VHF batteries are buggered through lack of use.
 
Simondjuk said:
I guess it's just beyond the scope of NMEA to provide such a facility.
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Nope, NMEA specifies a facility, because my Vesper Watchmate AIS display can emit the call requests. But sadly, very few radios keep up their half of the bargain and know what to do with them. Vesper maintain a list of those that do. My GX2100 is not among them.

I did try using the call-from-AIS facility of the radio for the first time on Friday, and although I had to pick from the list on the radio (actually on the RAM mic) instead of from the AIS display, it was perfectly usable that way.

Pete
 
prv said:
Nope, NMEA specifies a facility, because my Vesper Watchmate AIS display can emit the call requests. But sadly, very few radios keep up their half of the bargain and know what to do with them. Vesper maintain a list of those that do. My GX2100 is not among them.

I did try using the call-from-AIS facility of the radio for the first time on Friday, and although I had to pick from the list on the radio (actually on the RAM mic) instead of from the AIS display, it was perfectly usable that way.

Pete
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Agreed, it is useable, but a trifle clunky in that you have to manually cross refer the target to the VHF/RAM3 display, and have that display in list mode to do so.

I hadn't realised that an NMEA sentence existed which can tell a sufficiently equipped VHF who it is one wishes to call. I wonder why SH didn't implement the use of it on the CP and AIS enabled GX models. It seems to me to be a fairly fundamental missing link in the interface between the two units.
 
Simondjuk said:
I hadn't realised that an NMEA sentence existed which can tell a sufficiently equipped VHF who it is one wishes to call. I wonder why SH didn't implement the use of it on the CP and AIS enabled GX models. It seems to me to be a fairly fundamental missing link in the interface between the two units.
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I think because the plotter people at SH don't really "get" AIS. Certainly the AIS facilities on my CP180 on Kindred Spirit were markedly inferior to the Vesper Watchmate I have on Ariam. I don't mean that the functionality was defective, just that they hadn't really thought about how someone would actually use it in practice.

Pete
 
Fitted the SH GX2100E VHF just over a year ago complete with RAM3 Remote and SH Fog Horn/PA (love the listen-back feature which is useful for when SWMBO is on the bow dealing with the anchor and cussing), fantastic bit of kit and with the AIS receiver utilising the same aerial as the VHF, made it all very easy indeed to install. Far better than other VHF's that I have had including my Raymarine kit fitted to my old Targa.
 
Thanks everyone. I really appreciate your encouraging feedback, and no longer need to hear anything negative. :rolleyes:

The deed is done and said articles have been purchased, at the Boat Show. We got a fabulous deal, a decent margin below the cheapest combined (i.e. cheapest radio + cheapest RAM mike) prices. The deal is sufficiently impressive that if I gave you the details I'd have to kill us both.

Roll on November when the bad boy will be fitted!! :cool:
 
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