raymarine devotee says avoid - not fit for purpose

[Elessar]

Apart from a small Lowrance on an early boat, I've always had raymarine nav.

Latest boat has a C125 (deliberately not touch screen) with it's ipad link, a digital radar plus all the connected pilot, instruments etc. Exactly what I wanted and I was delighted.

The MFD become intermittent during warantee, but it was OK again and I didn't bother chase. I had exchanged some emails during the warantee period but I can't find them.

Now it's faulty I sent it to raymarine for a fixed price repair. They said it can't be fixed due to "water ingress" and offered 20% off a new one. With the discount its still more expensive than available from the keen price resellers such as cactus.

So in summary, raymarine sell boat stuff that isn't waterproof, then when it breaks just say, "tough, buy another one".

Don't say you haven't been warned.

 

[Whitelighter]

Ah, previous question answered

 

[acbruce]

May I ask how old was the broken device?

 

[crossy]

I've had all the main brands of nav gear now on my various boats and Raymarine is the only one to cause me significant and repeated issues and their support was awful for me too. The complete opposite of my experience with Garmin.

Might be worth referring to an independent such as Greenham Regis for an opinion?

 

[silverdee]

How annoying +1 for Garmin aftersales though -fixed radar (replaced i think) for me out of warranty foc.
Sent engineer to boat to look at camera and wind speed thingy issues all sorted foc.

 

[Elessar]

May I ask how old was the broken device?

Now just over 4 years. Started going wrong at 2 and a half. Consulted green ham Regis during warrantee but they wanted me to take it out of the boat myself and take it to them (even though boat in same marina as them) so I didn't get round to it when it started working again.

 

[wakeup]

Another +1 for Garmin. I had a Garmin unit fixed FoC 5 years after I bought it. They were a delight to deal with and I would only now buy Garmin gear. Though I do find their latest interface for touch screens a bit janet and john re the looking and feel.

 

[jfm]

I don't think you can beat garmin after sales. I had a radar problem and emailed thrm for help. They just sent a new one (4ft open scan) in a box and a reply paid label for me to send old one back.
I love the gear and user interfaces.

 

[Elessar]

I don't think you can beat garmin after sales. I had a radar problem and emailed thrm for help. They just sent a new one (4ft open scan) in a box and a reply paid label for me to send old one back.
I love the gear and user interfaces.

I always thought it was a bit of a PC/apple debate, each with their pros talked up by their fans, and cons talked down by them.
My old E series stuff was robust and gave no problems.
But now If they make stuff that isn't waterproof and don't care, when Garmin do then the debate is over.
Having said all of that, this post has been spotted and there has been some contact. If my opinion changes I will, of course, let everyone know.

 

[MedMilo]

+1 for Garmin. Had an issue with autopilot whilst on an extended cruise around Sardinia. They were in constant phone contact as my plans changed due to weather and, at the first opportunity, the local Garmin liveried van and man were standing by dock of transit marina as I arrived, armed with new bits. Job done within a couple of hours - amazing service.

 

[Barbican]

Sadly i have to agree. E9 little used in mint condition developed a power supply fault. 600+ to repair. No reply to the letter I sent. Doubtless a capacitor, but the boards are folded aparently to save space, so cant be reliably repaired.

Next time I will go with Garmin, simply on customer service reputation

 

[rubberduck]

Interesting, I sent a unit back to them with a fault, old unit but came back fixed, lasted about six months.
New boat will be fitted with Garmin, you've talked me into it.

 

[jrudge]

My experience with Garmin also good aside from the radar and autopilot going wrong in the first place !

Lost all electronic charting once on a long cruise. Tried the obvious. Resets and power downs. Called garmin. Spent 15 min on the phone and I can't remember what was done but 15 min later all working. Very happy.

I am glad they have seen this thread and I hope they resolve.

 

[Elessar]

My experience with Garmin also good aside from the radar and autopilot going wrong in the first place !

Lost all electronic charting once on a long cruise. Tried the obvious. Resets and power downs. Called garmin. Spent 15 min on the phone and I can't remember what was done but 15 min later all working. Very happy.

I am glad they have seen this thread and I hope they resolve.

Things do go wrong, it's how they are resolved that differentiates. I delivered a boat with £70k worth of furuno on it, the guy had everything backed up even the pilot pumps and pilot computers. 2 completely separate nav networks and a 4ft open array as a back-up! A software glitch took out the lot and I had to hand steer for over 1000 miles. Furuno were hopeless, plenty of attention and good will but no capability to repair it. Looks like garmin is stealing a march.
(caveat - that was about 7 years ago now furuno may have improved)

 

[McNessie]

Interesting about Raymarine, as I will be in the market shortly.

Slight thread hijack... No mention made of Simrad. Are they any better?

 

[Dick Atcherley]

I predict that what happened to the aircraft avionics market in General Aviation will happen to the navionics market with boats! 20 years ago, the market leader for avionics was Bendix King (with a few others such as Narco in 2nd and 'also-ran' paces) and then a new American pretender entered the market - Garmin. Set up by two guys, Min and Gary (lucky they didn't form the company name by amalgamating their names this way around...), the aim was to build innovative products with great product support. Bendix King ignored them and did very little - after all, they were the market leaders.

Today, Garmin essentially own the certified GA market, through regularly developing new products and going out of their way to look after their customers, and Bendix King are a shadow of their former selves.

There are lots of new companies emerging largely to look after the kit-build (non-C of A) LAA market, but Garmin are basically the market leaders - mainly through being nice to deal with.

That is not to say that the product never goes wrong (after all, if you strapped a PC to a fairground ride, and then left it out in the open for years, an electronic device will occasionally go wrong) but their 'can-do' attitude to fixing or replacing stuff is what gets guys like me coming back again and again.

When I fitted out my boat with a chartplotter, AIS and radio, I looked at Raymarine and the opposition, but at the end of the day went back to garmin. After all, they were a known quantity to me.

BTW I have no affiliation to the company and am not on commission - I just like the product and the service.

 

[Momac]

Thats a disappointing outcome as I have the similar e7 - which looks cosmetically the same (it has touch screen and buttons/rotary control).
The Raymarine mfd's are very expensive items and I had assumed a large part of the money was to pay for a product that is fit for purpose in a marine environment.
The unit being waterproof would be a primary requirement for me as I have it on my flybridge helm. It seems to me a couple of years is certainly not good enough .
Are Raymarine saying their mfds are not waterproof?

 

[crossy]

McNessie, I have a full SIMRAD system on my current boat and love it, really impressed with it. That said, I have contacted them a few times with queries and their back up doesn't seem as knowledgable and comprehensive as Garmin. For that reason alone I would probably choose GARMIN over SIMRAD if I was kitting out from scratch.

 

[jfm]

Simrad is nice but they just cannot do (and never have done) intuitive user interfaces as well as Garmin. If you are used to electronic nav kit you never have to read the Garmin manual, whereas you do with Simrad. Life is too short to read manuals when you shouldn't need to.

 

[Elessar]

Simrad is nice but they just cannot do (and never have done) intuitive user interfaces as well as Garmin. If you are used to electronic nav kit you never have to read the Garmin manual, whereas you do with Simrad. Life is too short to read manuals when you shouldn't need to.

A manual should only be read once familiar with the unit and one is bored, and any features not already spotted are a failure!

It's true that you get used to a brand, and I find Raymarine easier to pick up than garmin, but I know that would change quickly with familiarity.
I never got to like furuno even with a lot of use (again no recent experience) though their radars at the time were amazing and way better than anything else i'd ever used..
I like lowrance and in particular they way you can fully customise screens. They don't do very big stuff I don't think though. For small screens you can make very efficient use of the screen real estate.
Not much simrad experience, but agree i didn't find them easy to pick up.