The Sitex Colormax 5 ships with a Smart GPS sensor. The unit does contain a base map but to get detailed cartography, tide information, and buoy data you’ll need to add a map card.
We filled the unit’s single card slot with a C-Map Max chart card covering South Florida for our testing. It can also use C-Map NT+ cards.
Sitex Colormax 5 Marine Chartplotter
We mounted the Colormax 5 display unit with the supplied plastic tilt and swivel bracket. Connections are made on the back panel of the unit with twist-lock connectors. The Colormax 5E display can be flush-mounted with supplied hardware.
Screen Size and Viewability
The Sitex Colormax 5 screen was nice and bright during our day view testing. It measures 5-inches on the diagonal with a 320 x 240 pixel resolution and features a portrait layout.
As our tester slipped out to the side and viewed the screen at steep angles a small amount of screen darkening was noted. The darkening increased slightly when using polarized sunglasses.
Data can appear somewhat cluttered on the Sitex depending on the range settings. No screen fogging appeared at any time during our testing.
We rated the Colormax 5 good for daylight viewability after checking both the normal and sunlight color palettes. The unit has two other selectable color palettes including Night.
A momentary press of the Power button activates soft key plus and minus functions to change brightness to one of six levels and contrast to one of 11.
We rated the Colormax 5 good for nighttime viewability. However, we did note the screen will white out at steep viewing angles.
Operation
Multiple functions for the Enter key combined with four soft keys with page specific functionality garnered the Colormax 5E a good rating for chartplotter user interface. We found this unit generally easy to navigate and use.