I think both are sound but no doubt other posters will have experience on long-term reliability.
Also: Simrad: usually a bit cheaper; quieter motor; simpler (in my experience, anyway) to wire up to GPS.
Raymarine: visual headling display invaluable; I believe some models now come with a remote control. Not sure if this is the case with Simrad, but easy enough for you to check.
For what it is worth had a very positive response indeed from Raymarine when my ST2000 broke. It was way out of guarantee and was fixed rapidly and without quibble. They get 100% for aftersales from me.
My Simrad autopilot never worked very well from new and Simrad kept blaming the installation. It was only after the guarantee ran out that they finnally admitted that there was a fault but did not offer to fix it. I have now fitted a Raymarine one and it has now worked well for the last few months (same boat same installation).
My ST2000 is just brilliant, can't fault it at all and it gets a great deal of use as I mostly singlehand. I recently stomped on the shaft and the repair and after sales service was awesome - really made realise just what poor service I get from other suppliers.
I would have threatened to sue them for a new one, or get it fixed. With Bishop Skinner you get legal insurance that covers you for issues like this, provided the purchase is over £100 I believe. I used it to get a refund on some AGM batteries that were playing up, the supplier having admitted that they had problems when charging them with an Adverc controller.Having said this, I have a Simrad chart plotter that I like, but chose the Raymarine autopilot
Raymarine service is very good you can get answers by e mail next day, they work rather well. Simrad are cheaper in the bang for buck. In that the Simrad will handle, according to Simrad a larger boat for less money.
Thanks for all the feedback. I think I know which way I'm gonna go. Just trying to get Raymarine to reply to my enquiry about a potential repair to my old unit (threaded push rod stripped some of the thread - which I suspect won't be cost effective) but still waiting which doesn't bear out everyones praise for their service!
I have a major concern with the electronics on our ship: the simrad electronics... No good and to avoid totally !!!!
The little story is: our new 375 was delivered half of april 2010. On the trip home the NX40 lost every 2 or 3 hours it's GPS. Only way to recover was to shut down all electronics and start up again. A complaint to Hanse was formulated right away, but no solution found. Several reminders later and one year later i got an answer form the importer that the chart-plotter was not under guarantee anymore. So I got a backup navigation with a laptop running at first OCPN and recently Nobeltec Admiral.
Why did i buy this really expensive soft ? Since on the Simrad equipment there seems to be no support at all, i now built up an equivalent at the same price of an NSE8, using best state of the art hardware and software and i'm able to service it myself at very affordable prices.
At the end of the 2010 season automatic pilot gave up service. Since there is no after-sales support for Simrad i opened it up and repaired myself the auto-pilot. When it fails again, this will also be replaced.
Very simple conclusion: at the expensive Simrad prices, you get non-existent support afterwards.
A small marine-pc with the right software doesn't cost more, is simple to service yourself for very few bucks...
I know this all sounds very bad, but such was my experience !
Well, i really need to give an update, since the situation changed this WE. And the change was a really very good one !!! Thanks to a proposition from Mr. van der Ploeg of Holland Nautic (is the brand new importer of Simrad in the Netherlands) he changed the plotter to a NSE8 which works like a charm. We are just back from a whole day of sailing and i am really really happy. Everything works and works fluently !
I must say that after the post on this forum, a few days later everything has been solved also due to the excellent service of Jos Boone in Middelburg which right away had a NSE8 at my disposal. I switched in half a day with the NX40.We'll be sailing to the Baltic Sea in 10 days with a wonderful navigation system. The Nobeltec will be a very good back-up system.
I can't speak to highly of Raymarine or their regional agents, my GPS antenna died on me when it was just out of warranty and Raymarine replaced it FOC without a quibble.
I took it to their North East agent P.A. Lynch and within a very short time it was sorted.
Their equipment is first class and so is their aftersales service.
There's been quite a few threads on this subject. I think you need to be careful making comparisons because the new models are quite different to the older ones, e.g. the new Simrad TPs are supposed to be storm proof. I do know that their electronics are themselves encased inside the outer case for extra protection, they claim to have been tested in total immersion. So at least if (some would say when) it does fail you have some recourse. Others will tell you all these type of TPs fail in the end and the only really reliable ones are those with all the controls inside the boat (an SPX5, e.g.). I dismantled an old Autohelm 1000 recently and inside there were little plastic wheels, tiny ball bearings and bits of string, I was quite shocked at how flimsy it all looked.
I ended up going for a Simrad TP22 in the end as over spec'd for the size of boat and also could interface it with the chart plotter, can't comment on long term reliability though as only had it a couple of months. I'd like to hear from someone with longer term experience of the new Simrad TPs...
I wish I had bought the simrad tiller pilot instead of the ST1000, becxause the simrad accepts both nmea0183 wind sentences, whereas the raymarine only accepts the one my nasa wind instrument doesn't output.
Of course I could get a load of sea talk stuff, but ......
My simrad isn't connected to the gps and my main annoyance is adjusting the gain setting for the conditions.
Push a combination of buttons, wait to count number of bleeps and/or flashes and then more buttons to set to a new value. A turning knob or slider would be so much easier.
But as far as I can see, they are all like this regardless of make.