raymarine devotee says avoid - not fit for purpose

[oldgit]

Have only ever had older Raymarine kit of the brick outhouse variety, RL80 etc and had found it to be reliable even after 10 or fifteen years of use.
However boat behind me which sported similar vintage gear recently upgraded to the latest Raymarine kit.
He commisioned local dealer to recommend and install a suitable system for his Princess 45 including all the bells and whistles.
This included a lift out for latest transducers etc .
It took about a year to finally get the system to function correctly after repeated attempts by both local and head office technical bods.
Not sure of what problem was but various wrong items were installed which did not help .

 

[omega2]

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

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

Do yourself a favour go KODEN!

 

[NoIllusion]

Often wondered why commercial users tend to choose Furuno or B&G.........???. My last boat had Furuno........no issues at all in the 5 years of use, and easy to use. Radar was exceptionally good.

 

[AllanG]

Often wondered why commercial users tend to choose Furuno or B&G.........???. My last boat had Furuno........no issues at all in the 5 years of use, and easy to use. Radar was exceptionally good.

My experience of Furuno kit is that it's aimed at the commercial market, as I found it's not very user friendly for leisure use, and I much prefer my Raymarine A70D plotter, even though it's 'old tech'!!

 

[McNessie]

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.

That's very interesting. I hadn't even included Garmin in my list of possible kit, I will certainly look into them now. Raymarine WERE at the top!

I'm wondering if Simrad's patchy support could be effected by region? Whatever kit I choose, I'd like to get good support in the Med.

 

[McNessie]

Do yourself a favour go KODEN!

I'll check them out!

 

[McNessie]

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.

I'll take that on board!

 

[gjgm]

I'll take that on board!

I would agree but I would also say the newer Simrad is pretty obvious. As a family we seem to have numerous Garmin gadgets and although stuff does go wrong they always seem more than fair in their proposals.
Re MFD..although I have used Garmin for some years I still prefer Navionics...each time I use their app on phone or tablet I still think..ahh..that is more like it.

 

[oceanfroggie]

First thing we did with last boat was remove Raymarine gear and replace with Garmin. Was more intuitive to use too.

 

[rubberduck]

We like the new Raymarine touch screen all glass stuff, do Garmin have something similar? Also we have Raymarine sat tv on existing boat & will need something similar on new one, any suggestions.

 

[Elessar]

Things do go wrong, it's how they are resolved that differentiates.

- - - - - - - - - - 8< - - - - - - - - -

Looks like garmin is stealing a march.

Update. Seems Raymarine do care more than was first apparent. A more senior person has looked into it and has just given me a call.

They are honouring the fixed price repair and replacing the unit. I think this is absolutely fair and what they should have done in the first place, but at least when it was looked at properly they behaved well and hopefully they will know what to do next time.

Second hand radar scanner no longer for sale and I am a happy bunny

 

[Dick Atcherley]

I wonder if they read this forum...?

 

[Elessar]

I wonder if they read this forum...?

Maybe. If they do, take heed and act then good for them. Doesn't matter how companies collate their satisfaction data.

 

[rafiki_]

Maybe. If they do, take heed and act then good for them. Doesn't matter how companies collate their satisfaction data.

Good result a Mark. I am considering an upgrade to Rafiki's kit which is all Raymarine, and you had me worried for a while.

 

[oceanfroggie]

Might be a bit simplistic but IMHO this sort of explains the subtleties

• Garmin = iPhone/Mac
• Raymarine = Android/PC

 

[rubberduck]

Might be a bit simplistic but IMHO this sort of explains the subtleties

• Garmin = iPhone/Mac
• Raymarine = Android/PC

Thats bad timing, just updated my I phone & its crashing all over the place ! :ambivalence:

 

[Bru]

Thats bad timing, just updated my I phone & its crashing all over the place ! :ambivalence:

Ditto my Android phone if it's any consolation :nonchalance:

 

[Elessar]

Might be a bit simplistic but IMHO this sort of explains the subtleties

• Garmin = iPhone/Mac
• Raymarine = Android/PC

Spot the apple devotee - apple = all style and hype - pc = does the job. (not an apple devotee)

I agree with the distinction, maybe not the way round you put it!

 

[Divemaster1]

Do yourself a favour go KODEN!

Echo that ... When I got the Koden installed, they simply said ... "see you if you change your boat" ... My MFD is now around 8 Years, and have nice Radar features that I have not seen on the other manufacturers mentioned in here, .... such as 24 & 48 RPM and split/dual range radar screen ... so you can speed up scanner to 48 RPM and split screen with one part on close range and other part at mid range, without loosing refresh frequency .... a rather nice feature...