Practical Sailor's gear and boat reviews take the guesswork out of your buying decisions.

Volume 30
Number 5
March 2004

Networked Systems: Furuno vs. Raymarine

Big screens and big bucks—Raymarine and Furuno offer completely networked electronics packages that allow monitoring—and complete control—from more than one location.

Furuno's alphanumeric keypad, which allows easy data entry, is one of the strongest features on the NavNet plotter/sounder combo. The trackball needs to be kept clean.

Lots of marine electronics makers produce stand-alone components like a radar, chartplotter, or depthsounder. It used to be the only way to go. But, nowadays integrated units are all the rage, and are available from several manufacturers, including SI-TEX and Simrad. But to take things to the highest level, to what is today the state of the art, you'll need a "networked" system.

Two of the major players in the networking arena today are Furuno, with its NavNet system, and Raymarine, offering the HSB² network system. We'll review those systems here. Unfortunately, we couldn't get our hands on Northstar's 6000i, the newest addition to the network world, in time for this…

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