Garmin GPS advice

[andrew humphries]

Hi all, I am looking at buying my first gps and I am looking at the garmin 500 and 700 series, being pulled towards the 500 because of cost but would be interested to hear your experiences. At the moment we only have a small 23ft but like the idea of being able to follow a course if fog comes down or something similar, my biggest concern of the 500 is the small size of the screen, how easy is it to use and view being only 5". I am thinking of mounting it on a bracket so when we upgrade the boat at some point to a larger one then we can transfer the gps, so thinking buy the 7" and then we have it.
What thoughts do you all have
thanks
Andrew

 

[rafiki_]

I had a 550 on my old Sunline. Great bit of kit, easy to read and use.

 

[Ripster]

Go for the biggest screen you can. I have used a few of the a few Garmin Marine GPS's and they are all great bits of kit, but the bigger the screen, the easier and less frustrating they are to use IMO.

 

[Bathdave]

I bought a Garmin 750 when I bought my 24ft Maxum two years ago...very happy with it and I think they can be bought quite cheaply now

I definitely prefer the screen on the bigger size so I can glance at it rather thn needing to peer closely at it.

Maybe I need new glasses !

 

[andrew humphries]

thanks all of you for that advice, i am def favouring the idea of the larger screen 70dv which comes including the transducer. particularly as glasses are now high on my need list

 

[dan from bhg]

thanks all of you for that advice, i am def favouring the idea of the larger screen 70dv which comes including the transducer. particularly as glasses are now high on my need list

Yes, the new 70dv is a really nice unit. Well worth considering. I've been playing around the with the dv on the GPSMap 820xs recently and it works really well. Here's a wreck I found on the chart. A quick circle around and I soon picked it up on the dv...





The only issue with the echoMap range is that they don't have NMEA2000, so if you ever want to connect it to your NMEA2000 compliant engine, or any other NMEA2000 equipment onboard, you won't be able to. You would need the GPSMap range. The GPSMap 751xs is not too much more money but gives you NMEA2000 connectivity, Garmin Meteor compatibility and Garmin helm app connectivity etc. Of course, if you don't need the connectivity of the GPSMap, then the echoMap is the obvious choice.

 

[andrew humphries]

great to get that advice thanks so much for taking the time to reply.just need to do some searches now to find a good price for the echomap I think

 

[dan from bhg]

great to get that advice thanks so much for taking the time to reply.just need to do some searches now to find a good price for the echomap I think

Hint hint!

 

[dan from bhg]

Give me a call or drop me an email and I'll match or beat the best price you've found. Got them in stock.