raymarine or furuno

[wolverine]

Hi all
I have a furuno fcv and sold it with boat. Just want to know if the new ray marine combos are as good as the stand alone furuno 627 or587 . Raymarine is 7" dragonfly combo or the a78 7" multifunction . I was looking at the furno 587 and stand alone gps of some sort . Just had the guy reconmended raymarine because on bottom imagine and all others goodies. But not sure how they would go in deep water or if they are as good as furuno

[chocolatemoose]

where abouts are you fishing. have you got a budget in mind. what do you think of 70s large collars ?. these are all important questions

mOose

[scottar]

Bottom imaging is really a "shallow" water thing to about 40m and will struggle to produce really good images in a swelly situation. How deep is deep? I would have normally said that Furuno would be the pick for deepwater stuff but with chirp and the likes now, it is a bit harder to say. See if your salesman has any on water photos of the sort of depths you are interested in.

[wolverine]

Moved to Mackay so the deepest up here has been 60 meter 186 ft but do like to do big trips when in brissy or any where been in 300 ft but not much any more . As for budget . Up to $4000

[scottar]

Up to 100 metres, any of the options you have listed should do the job. My personal preference would still be the Furuno with the model choice up to yourself. Proven performers with extremely simple operation of what really matters. You wont need any more than the "standard" 600 watt transducer unless you are going to expand your horizons into deeper water (200 +). This is not to say there isn't any advantage in the bigger transducer with the 587 but it is not a necessity. The combo style units while capable, have to be more complex to operate by their very nature. I have a Furuno GP7000F in my own rig that came with the boat. A very good unit and extremely capable but requires extra key presses to access most of the functions at some time. If space is an issue or you really want the back up GPS then the argument for the combo is made stronger.

[wolverine]

Thanks for the feedback. I was also told that there is very limited stand alone gps now. That was my main concern. I have had a few issues with the Garmin gps so wanted to go lorance or raymarine .but haven't heard much about raymarine. Guy at shop said it is hard to find stand alone gps and asked why I don't go for combo . I told him a few years ago I had one and it died 3 km from marks so had nothing to work with. I want to have 2 so if one dies I still got the other. He reconmended getting 2 combos . I still leaning towards furuno sounder and a gps or gps combo. Can any one tell me what's the best gps atm

[Gazza.Boyne]

I have a Furuno FCV587 stand alone sounder & have just installed a Raymarine 9" Multifunction 'A95' unit (non sonar) in my boat.

The Furuno is a great sounder and very easy to use, so I didn't bother with getting the Raymarine with the sonar or down vision modules (A97/A98).

I am very happy with the Raymarine A series.

[JulianDeMarchi]

I run the Raymarine E7D and an A65 unit for the reasons you mention. I'm very very happy with my all Raymarine setup. I can recommend the Raymarine E7D, but have no comment on the down vision stuff as mine is too old for it. If you get both Raymarine units, an A and E series, you can network them together using the Raynet stuff and your marks from the E7D will float over to the A series. So you can mark nice shows on the sounder and have them show up on your GPS in the same instance. I find this very handy. The only thing I wish the E7D would do is playback your sounder pic like Lowrance can. That way if you find an interesting bump you can pause the sounder, scroll back then take the mark.

If you do go this way, don't install the Raymarine switch. For $400 it is the biggest rip off around. Grab an 8 port ethernet switch mount it in a dry spot and connect your network to that. This is the route I went and couldn't be happier.

When I was building my setup I did consider mixed brands, but then it's harder to get the marks off the sounder etc...

[blairv70]

I run a similar setup to Julian and love it. I have the a78 and a67 so have both downvision (Chirp) and Clearpulse 83/200khz Sonar

This is a really useful setup and provides the best of both worlds fro shallow and deep water. The Downvision is good to get more detail about what shows up on the normal sonar so things that look like a big rock on the bottom can actually show up as a school of fish on Downvision so this is very handy.

The networking is great as well as you can swap screens and features easily.