Raymarine c90w

[Strike Zone]

I'm looking to upgrade my chartplotter. I was looking at the c90w. Does anyone have any personal feed back from this unit. I am looking just for a chartplotter now but down the road if I wanted to hook up a transducer would I need to buy anything besides the transducer or does it just plug strait into the unit.

[seabob4]

SZ,
You'll need to buy either the DSM 30 or the DSM 300 sounder module as well as a ducer to enable the FF feature of the C90W.

If your main deal right now is the plotter, I'd consider Garmin, they are probably the best at GPS and plotters.  But adding in the FF functions later, I'd seriously consider the Lowrance HDS series w/structure scan...

wingtime (Bruce) will come along shortly to describe his Lowrance HDS-7, and circlehooked (Scott) can give you the rundown on his Garmin 5 series...

Raymarine's strongpoint is radar, basically from the old Raytheon military systems.  But there are better out there for what you want...

[wingtime]

I had a Garmin 441 on my other aquasport.  When I sold that I had to decide what I wanted on my Explorer.  As Seabob mentioned Garmin's rise to fame is GPS.  I had experience with Garmins GPS units in aviation.  I had decided on a 5" Garmin combo unit but then I started to look at Lowrance HDS.  One of the main reasons I looked at Lowrance is the user interface of the HDS is very user friendly and easy to navigate.  Even after having the Garmin for over a year I still had trouble navigating thru the screens.  Since my main goal was to find fish and places to scuba dive I decided on the HDS with the structure scan unit.  I decided to go this way since Lowrance rise to fame of course was flasher sonar units.  I can tell you the sonar and the downscan is incredible.  The preinstalled maps are far superior to the Garmin maps.  Now the Garmin with the blue vision charts could be better but I've never used one.

[slvrlng]

The 300 modules in the past had a connector problem that would cause the units to shut off and then you would have to pull the lines and reset the whole thing. They have changed the cables form a ethernet5 type to a pin system. So if you are buying new you should be alright but myself would stay away from older design on used equipment. Out of all the RM stuff I really like the new A67 with the hybrid touch screen. Just remember that on any RM sounder the software does all the figuring of gain, Hz, sensitivity, range and other parameters automatically. This can be an issue when you are in 3000 feet of water but only want to look at the top 300 feet. One thing about the RM GPS, it is a 25 channel unit, much faster aquisition!

The new C97
http://www.raymarine.com/view/?id=2840


Myself I am a Furuno fan!
http://www.furuno.com/en/business_produ ... creational

[seabob4]

Lewis has a good point with Furuno, excellent equipment, probably the best at doing all things well.

Another thing you have to consider is customer service should a unit go on the fritz.  Not saying this is the norm with Raymarine stuff, but you may want to do some reading in this thread on THT...http://www.thehulltruth.com/boating-for ... rvice.html