Having used all three major brands of
radar and owned both
Furuno and
Raymarine/Raytheon I have the following observations.
1)
Furuno I've owned two different
Furuno systems and they have proven to be very, very reliable yet less user friendly. It was much easier to get good clean returns on than any of my
Raymarine units. The filtering capability in comparison to actual targets was far better than any of the
Raymarine units I owned and the reliability was... well... ZERO issues.
2)
Raymarine- I've owned three different Raytheon/Raymarine units and each has let me down or failed at the most inopportune time. My most recent was a
Raymarine C-80 with 2K dome. I had two PC board failures and one internal Sea Talk buss failure plus a screen that delaminated.
Raymarine was good enough about fixing the issues but I have the ability to drive stuff there in person so that seems to change things a bit when it comes to customer service. I also had a defective
Raymarine 125
GPS antenna o this system that also failed. These failures were all on my C-80 system over two seasons worth of use. No lightning strikes all installed exactly according to
Raymarine specs.
Prior to my C-80 system I owned an RC70 system and it too had a few repairs (dead radome motor & failed chart insert connector) but was more reliable than my C-80 system.
Raymarine was not as good at customer support when I owned this unit as they were with the C-80 and it seems they are trying harder but perhaps it's because reliability has suffered with the newer generation??
I currently own yet another
Raymarine radar
that came with my current boat, and it is currently in a failure mode.
Raymarine has told me they will no longer repair this unit and it's less than ten years old! I turn it on and it works fine for about ten minutes, accurately, then just stops returning any targets beyond about 1/8 of a mile and even then those targets are not accurate and are more like sea clutter. My local electronics shop thinks it's a failure in the dome, and would fix it, but they can't even order the parts..
3)
Garmin- I helped install, and dial in, two
Garmin radar systems last season, one for my neighbor on a Sabre 362, and another for a good friend with an Ericson 35-3. to say the least I am VERY impressed with these units and these are not even the HD domes. Having owned many
Garmin GPS units 175, 210, 176, 176C & 182C I can say without a doubt that their
GPS's are very, very reliable. I have only sent one unit in for repair and it was my fault not a
Garmin failure. My wife thought she was helping and wiped the screen with a powerful kitchen cleaner and ruined the anti-glare coating.
Garmin went ABOVE and BEYOND even after I told them honestly what I had done. Long story short they installed a new screen FREE OF CHARGE and had it back to me in 9 days from the day I shipped it.
I have not yet decided which brand I will go with for my new
radar but I'm leaning 70%
Garmin 30%
Furuno right now. The package I'm looking at with
Garmin is a 3205C (I prefer the old
Garmin menu system to the new) with the HD dome. You can get into this set up for under 2K..
I personally will not be buying
Raymarine again. Don't get me wrong I have their auto pilots and have had good luck as I have with their ST60 stuff but the
radars & plotters and a
VHF have been much less than satisfactory when it comes to reliability for me.
Perhaps sailing in Maine my
radar gear gets more of a work out but
Furuno never gave me an issue and neither have my
Garmin plotters..
Linear Mode
