A quick rundown on the Garmin GPS750S. Its hooked up as the engine instruments through the NMEA2000 interface to the DF175 Suzuki.
Touchscreen is a nice feature, as long as you remember to wipe your hands after handling bait or fish, and can be challenging while travelling in a reasonable swell. That said, it is easy to use even with large fingers.
Display is easy to read and the overlays can be customised on each screen to provide ancillary information including real time fuel usage and fuel remaining. One feature I would have liked to have seen is RPM available on the overlays for the gps and sounder screens. The screen is 7" diagonal, which is enough real estate to display the GPS/Sounder split screen with a horizontal overlay at the bottom of the screen providing a range of options that the user can specify including speed, fuel, water temp etc.
The unit came with a 600w transducer, and is a dual frequency unit and there is a split screen to display both if required. As a novice i use the fish symbols and depth indicator, and have used it when jigging for kingies in 65M of water with the fish at 30M with some success on the day ;^)
On the GPS side of things, you have a choice of two charts, a navigation chart and a fishing chart, the fishing chart shows more depth contours, a feature I have found handy when searching for the Step between Bermagui & Montague.
I like the clean look of the dash without instruments, but the minor annoyance is that GPS information is not available on the engine instruments screen as an overlay, and with a single engine you get analog style instruments instead of the bar graph display that is shown in the brochures.
The unit was reasonably easy to configure, although it took me a couple of minutes to work out that you have to switch the ignition on to add fuel, makes sense though, if the engine NMEA isn't on the unit can't "see" it.
From experimenting, it seems that you need to buy the aftermarket Garmin map if you want to use routing, as the GPS wanted me to go cross country when I tried to route to the harbour from South of Bermagui.
The unit has an external aerial, which is mounted beside the unit immediately behind the windscreen, and is clear of the hardtop. It showed signal from 13 satellites when checked.
There is a man overboard feature that is handy for marking a patch of flatties when drifting because it is so easy to use, and may come in handy if one of your crew goes swimming.
Track management is a bit onerous, if you get into the detail, having to select color for track and then which track colors to display. Can make for a very busy screen if you don't do your housekeeping and your fishing the same are for a month solid.
There are a few information screens, tide tables being very handy.
I used Mapsource to transfer the waypoints from our previous GPS. You have to copy the files onto a card that was formatted, inserted in the unit to get the ID and then placed into the PC. Quite simple once you have done it, but then I am not big on reading manuals.
The only similar item I have had opportunity to use is a Lowrance HDS5 and my only comment would be that the larger screen is nice, but not relevant , and I prefer the touch screen.
Is it worth two grand? We didn't fit engine instruments so we saved a few dollars, but only a few after the cost of the Garmin/Suzuki rigging kit. It does make the grade on geek value and minimalist helm. All up yes, a bit more than the basics and a screen big enough for aging eyesight.
They claim the unit can drive a 1Kw transducer, but I couldn't justify the extra expense, we don't go deep dropping.
All up, very happy with the unit. Just got notified of a software update, will provide more info after the update is installed.
Cheers
Thy
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by honda900
