how does raymarine i70 display compare to rivals?

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dedwards

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I'm looking at nmea 2000 instruments and am struggling to find any major comparison of them. For example the i70 is £100 more expensive than the b&g equivilent but they essentially display the same data so does anybody know of any major selling points of one nmea 2000 display over another? Likewise are there any online articles that compare displays?
 
The i70 can display AIS targets (plus a few useful bits of AIS information) - handy if you don''t have a chartplotter outside with it on.

One thing which isn't often discussed is that NMEA 2000 sends groups of information (PGN) round the system. There are the odd group which are quite similar, and different units may choose a different groups. For example, you may find your chartplotter sends say waypoint ID out, and the i70 has an option to display it, but it won't pick it up. Whether sticking to one manufacturer is more reliable I do not know, but I guess it is a factor. Otherwise, it might be worth cross checking which PGN's your various bits of 2000 equipment send and receive.

I think there was a PBO review a while ago. Will re-post if I can find it.
 
dedwards said:
I'm looking at nmea 2000 instruments and am struggling to find any major comparison of them. For example the i70 is £100 more expensive than the b&g equivilent but they essentially display the same data so does anybody know of any major selling points of one nmea 2000 display over another? Likewise are there any online articles that compare displays?
Click to expand...

I've an i70 and a GMI20 fitted. I prefer the GMI20 as a general purpose display. It is much more configurable. I bought the i70 specifically to display AIS data in the cockpit. It does it as well as you'd expect a display of that size to do it. Adequate for giving you an extra warning in open waters, not that practical for monitoring multiple targets in busy waters. Apart from the AIS I don't see the i70 as having any advantages over the GMI20.

I've had no problems mixing and matching N2K units in general. I thought I did once, but the culprit in that case turned out to be an old Stowe unit causing a Raymarine box to back off. N2K doesn't have a problem having more than one PGN for the same purpose, unlike 0183 - I've gone through the list on the NMEA website, but there are PGNs that can effectively be customised, so I wouldn't expect to be able to successfully configure a Raymarine transducer with a Garmin display or v.v. Nor would I expect to be able to mix and match the various bits of the autohelm.
 
I had i70 units but now have Tritons as the new boat came with B&G kit rather than Raymarine.

The Raymarine units felt more flexible in being able to configure your own pages or display data but the B&G kit's pre programmed pages were more useful to me than the equiverlents on the i70s

Oddly though I have yet to find out how to share the waypoint name on the network
 
Little Grebe said:
Oddly though I have yet to find out how to share the waypoint name on the network
Click to expand...

B&G has same issue? It was specifically the waypoint name that I cannot get on my i70 (from a Garmin chartplotter) - different PGN's. Presume the GMI20 displays it ok? Quite irritating as the waypoint name cannot be displayed on the chartplotter either, so you know where the next waypoint is, but not what it is! Can't grab it out of 0183 either - should be able to.
 
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