Lowrance Brand

[rwakeham]

I have a Lowrance 3300C plotter, and like a lot of people on this forum, I like it, and I like the Navionics charts. Now I am in the process of buying a new boat, and went to all the stands @ LIBS for a new chartplotter, sonar and radar. I liked the pricing of the Lowrance and I can get a good deal on the:

LCX-27c - plotter / sonar / radar display.
plus sonar transducer and a basic radar 2kW 7 degree beam.

I like the way that included in the price are the nauticpath charts which on looking at an area I know well appeared to give good detail.

Incidentally - I bought a Yeoman plotter at he show I had heard good things about them, but was really impressed with the demo - the best of both worlds with aper and electronics.

Does anyone have experience of these models and of the quality of the radar and sonar ?

thanks.

 

[pvb]

The Lowrance brand is well-respected, but their radar offering is very new and you're unlikely to find many people with experience of it. It may be very good, or it may have the sort of niggling teething problems which affect many new products.

From what I've seen of the details, the Lowrance radar function is fairly basic, with a simple circular display which doesn't take full advantage of the screen size. It doesn't seem to be capable of overlaying the radar image on the chart - a feature which is incredibly useful. And there's no MARPA facility either. The "basic" scanner you mention is a 12" unit wih a 7 degree beam width, which isn't going to give great definition; you'd be better off paying more and getting the 18" scanner.

I don't know about the 27C, but on the 25C the radar scanner is wired up to the data cable. This is the same cable which is used for NMEA0183 connections, so it might lead to interfacing problems unless you can use the separate NMEA2000 cable. This is worth checking with the dealer.

I don't know what sort of price you consider is a "good deal", or how important sonar is to you, but right now I'd only be tempted to consider Lowrance if it was a lot cheaper than the tried and tested Raymarine combination units (which also use Navionics charts). You can get a Raymarine C70 with an 18" scanner and GPS aerial delivered to your door for £1450 (plus another £450 or so if you want a sonar module). It would give you many more features, including MARPA and radar/chart overlay, and is fully supported by excellent customer service.

 

[rwakeham]

I am getting quotations for Raymarine as well and we'll see what the difference in price is.

 

[pvb]

Good idea - out of interest, how much was the Lowrance deal?

 

[rwakeham]

Around £1,600 - the screen is closer in size to the C80