I purchased a Raymarine E90W plotter and 18" HD Radar at the Miami boat show.
After a little use, I'm going to keep my Garmin 740 and use the E90W for radar and ER video display. I'm somewhat disappointed in the Raymaine unit and depending on what interest I get from this post and others I am considering contacting Raymarine’s software manager and suggesting several software upgrades.
Here’s by beef:
The unit at full brightness is not as bright as I would like nor as bright as the Garmin.
The redraw rate for charts is slightly lower than the Garmin, but not really a problem.
The font size for almost everything is too small requiring reading glasses.
But the following 2 issues to me are something Raymarine needs to fix now:
When navigating a route, it is not possible to display time to destination or distance to destination when viewing the chart application or radar application. It is possible to view this information but the route information page must be brought up requiring 7 button presses to get there. And then to return to the radar or chart-plotter page several buttons must be pressed again. According to a Raymarine tech, this is common to all their current MFD chart-plotters.
This seems to me to be basic information that most folks would want always displayed. Ever hear “when are we gong to get there” or “how much farther”, or “are we going to get there in daylight”. Imagine trying to determine if you’re going to get to your anchorage or marine before dark and pressing several buttons over a period of probably 30 seconds while trying to keep the boat in the center of the channel. My Garmin unit displays this important information on the chart view page and for this reason will continue to be my primary chart-plotter.
Secondly, each route on my Raymarine unit will only hold up to 50 waypoints. I guess the good folks at Raymarine have never created a route on their chart-plotters when navigating the AICW as the 50 waypt limitation will get you only a few miles. For you folks with Ray equipment do you also enjoy this 50 waypt limitation?
These issues, except the brightness, could easily be fixed by a simple software fix. Hasn’t anyone mentioned this to Raymarine or are they just not listening?
For you folks that are familiar with Garmins PC interface software (Homeport) for creating routes on your PC and uploading them to your plotter, I think you will be sadly disappointed in Raymaines version of their PC software interface, Voyage Planner. This software comparatively priced to Garmins is not really made by Raymarine but by North Port Systems, a separate company.
I found it difficult to install Voyage Planner on my computer and especially difficult to install the Navionics Silver charts the E90W plotter uses. You are using products from 3 different companies, North Port Systems, Raymarine, and Navionics, each with their own software licenses. So you can image there are going to be difficulties. Once up and running I found the route editing features limiting and the overall use of the software amateurish compared to Garmin.
For example: After creating a route of 18 miles in Voyage Planner consisting of 75+ waypoints I saved it to my hard drive but when I tried to upload the routes to my E90W, I learned of the 50 waypt limitation mentioned above. This is a chart-plotter limitation, Voyage Planner will save more waypts. I figured I would divide the route into 2 smaller routes consisting of less than 50 waypts but unlike Garmins Homeport, you can’t divide or join routes in Voyage Planner.
Raymarine uses Navionics as their chart vendor while Garmin uses their own Blue charts. Both chart systems seem to be very accurate and I’ve found no advantage to one over the other, but the preloaded charts on many Raymarine units are Navionics Silver which don’t include Tide or Current data. You must upgrade to Navionics Gold charts at $180 to get this important feature.
I got a great price on my E90W and would remove my Garmin unit if the above features were present on the Raymarine unit. The Raymarine 18” HD Radar seems very capable from my very limited use of it. I can’t compare it with other units because I’ve never used other units and hope the software limitations of the plotter don’t include the Radar.
If you’ve read this far you probably are considering the purchase of a chartplotter or have a Raymarine unit. If you have experience with Raymarines chart plotters or radar and have any software upgrade suggestions, please post them here and I will include them in my contact with Raymarine.
After a little use, I'm going to keep my Garmin 740 and use the E90W for radar and ER video display. I'm somewhat disappointed in the Raymaine unit and depending on what interest I get from this post and others I am considering contacting Raymarine’s software manager and suggesting several software upgrades.
Here’s by beef:
The unit at full brightness is not as bright as I would like nor as bright as the Garmin.
The redraw rate for charts is slightly lower than the Garmin, but not really a problem.
The font size for almost everything is too small requiring reading glasses.
But the following 2 issues to me are something Raymarine needs to fix now:
When navigating a route, it is not possible to display time to destination or distance to destination when viewing the chart application or radar application. It is possible to view this information but the route information page must be brought up requiring 7 button presses to get there. And then to return to the radar or chart-plotter page several buttons must be pressed again. According to a Raymarine tech, this is common to all their current MFD chart-plotters.
This seems to me to be basic information that most folks would want always displayed. Ever hear “when are we gong to get there” or “how much farther”, or “are we going to get there in daylight”. Imagine trying to determine if you’re going to get to your anchorage or marine before dark and pressing several buttons over a period of probably 30 seconds while trying to keep the boat in the center of the channel. My Garmin unit displays this important information on the chart view page and for this reason will continue to be my primary chart-plotter.
Secondly, each route on my Raymarine unit will only hold up to 50 waypoints. I guess the good folks at Raymarine have never created a route on their chart-plotters when navigating the AICW as the 50 waypt limitation will get you only a few miles. For you folks with Ray equipment do you also enjoy this 50 waypt limitation?
These issues, except the brightness, could easily be fixed by a simple software fix. Hasn’t anyone mentioned this to Raymarine or are they just not listening?
For you folks that are familiar with Garmins PC interface software (Homeport) for creating routes on your PC and uploading them to your plotter, I think you will be sadly disappointed in Raymaines version of their PC software interface, Voyage Planner. This software comparatively priced to Garmins is not really made by Raymarine but by North Port Systems, a separate company.
I found it difficult to install Voyage Planner on my computer and especially difficult to install the Navionics Silver charts the E90W plotter uses. You are using products from 3 different companies, North Port Systems, Raymarine, and Navionics, each with their own software licenses. So you can image there are going to be difficulties. Once up and running I found the route editing features limiting and the overall use of the software amateurish compared to Garmin.
For example: After creating a route of 18 miles in Voyage Planner consisting of 75+ waypoints I saved it to my hard drive but when I tried to upload the routes to my E90W, I learned of the 50 waypt limitation mentioned above. This is a chart-plotter limitation, Voyage Planner will save more waypts. I figured I would divide the route into 2 smaller routes consisting of less than 50 waypts but unlike Garmins Homeport, you can’t divide or join routes in Voyage Planner.
Raymarine uses Navionics as their chart vendor while Garmin uses their own Blue charts. Both chart systems seem to be very accurate and I’ve found no advantage to one over the other, but the preloaded charts on many Raymarine units are Navionics Silver which don’t include Tide or Current data. You must upgrade to Navionics Gold charts at $180 to get this important feature.
I got a great price on my E90W and would remove my Garmin unit if the above features were present on the Raymarine unit. The Raymarine 18” HD Radar seems very capable from my very limited use of it. I can’t compare it with other units because I’ve never used other units and hope the software limitations of the plotter don’t include the Radar.
If you’ve read this far you probably are considering the purchase of a chartplotter or have a Raymarine unit. If you have experience with Raymarines chart plotters or radar and have any software upgrade suggestions, please post them here and I will include them in my contact with Raymarine.