Recommended nautical GPS system?

Question

Recommended nautical GPS system?

Answer 1

if your going nautical, go Raymarine. She works like a charm for me

Answer 2

Always go for Garmin altho the Blaupunkts are good value

Answer 3

RAYMARINE

Answer 4

Raymarine, Northstar, Furuno, in that order are my favorites.

Answer 5

i have a nav-man 550 chart plotter gps, with full coverage and south england coast super zoomed, if you ar wanting one i would recommend it, they cost new £650.00  am selling a brand new one for £300.  ono

Answer 6

It depends on what you want to do ( and where you are) and how much you want to spend. For casual dayboat work,any of the small, cheap (£150ish-£400ish - depending on screen size ) plotters are quite suitable,Navman-Garmin-Lowrance are the more common. Raymarine,as already mentioned,is OK,but rather expensive and I don`t think the cases are great.  If you have a bit more to spend,go for Furuno or Simrad (though you may find them cheaper than Raymarine ) I personally,prefer Simrad. If you require pinpoint accuracy you will need "differential",which corrects the sat position to about 2mtr.

Hope I havn`t confused you further !  

This is a UK answer.

Answer 7

get your self a cheap old gps what you can interface with a laptop what has a CD ROM,you can then buy a CD chart plotter programme of the whole of the UK or anywhere in the world (cheap)then you can view your navigation in colour and on a big display,

Answer 8

It all depends on what is important to you and how much you are willing to pay for it.   You can get simple handheld GPS for around $100 that will get you from point A to B just fine, but handheld units are usually slower to aquire satellites and you may spend a lot on batteries if you can't plug it in.  Anything not permenantly affixed is also more likely to be lost or stolen if left out.  I navigated all over the Bahamas several times with no more than a simple hand held unit.  I've had a Garmin 76 for years that has held up very well.  I do find the menu system a bit less intuitive than other units I've used.

I went from the above to Uniden GPS with with mapping technology that is built into the pedestal above the wheel.  I love it.  I rarely even bother with waypoints, since I can just move the cursor to where I want to go see where I am and everything in between.  It is however, much, much more expensive than a basic GPS.

What I can seriously recommend is to stay away from the sort of middle of the road units that have mapping technology and a small black & white screen.  On a screen that small, you really need color to define things.   Go with one extreme or the other.

I also don't like the idea of interfacing a GPS with computer map systems, at least not on most smaller boats, because I think it's important I can have the whole system in the cockpit in bad weather.  It also means you need two pieces of functional equipment instead of one, which increases the odds of failure.   If there is one thing I've learned about outfitting boats, it's the value of the KISS principle.  Keep it as simple as you can to meet your needs.