I had been pondering upgrading the nav gear on our boat recently. I am an experienced leisure boater, yachtmaster offshore ticket, and very much of a 'techie' leaning. I like gadgets and IT. But observing the releases of new marine electronics gear from manufacturers since about 2007 I find myself wondering what is really new, and more important what if any of the 'new' is actually useful in the real world of leisure boating?
The only significant 'event' in the market seems the blurring of the lines between smart mobile devices and traditional marine electronics vendors.
To get about on a leisure boat, 2D map displays, VHF, Radar, sonar, AIS and auto helm seem much as they were seven years ago. Most of the new generation of electronics boast all manner of enticing functionality, but in reality are such mere novelty? Vendors have to sell kit, so marketing has to convince us to enter a cycle of continual hardware refreshes, but is it really worth the hassle? N2K didn't seem to live up to the early promise of seamless plug and play, mix'n'match kit from different vendors.
I'm beginning to think I should not bother upgrading the marine electronics till either we change our boat or the kit breaks. What do folk think?
A real standout to me is the new radars, all of which appeared here in Panbo. The Raymarine HD radar for example easily picks up all small fiberglass boats without fuss where as the prior generation of recreational radar would often miss 20% of small fiberglass boats (30 foot and less) in moderate rain or fog.