The Standard Horizon CPV550 features a massive 12-inch color screen and will do about anything but cook dinner.
It’s a full-function chartplotter packed with a VHF and a number of bonus capabilities. Plus, it has the ability to hook up to an optional black box sounder and AIS receiver.
The Standard Horizon CPV550 can do it all, from VHF duties to chartplotting.
The across-the-board capabilities of the CPV550 required an extensive series of tests to complete a review. To begin, we did a series of VHF radio bench tests.
VHF Test Results and Features
Overall the Standard Horizon CPV550 preformed well in our transceiver testing. It earned excellent ratings for transmitter power stability and receiver sensitivity. The only glitch we noticed was a slight drift off frequency when transmitting after being in our cold torture chamber. Still the unit remained well within industry and governmental specifications at all times. According to Standard Horizon spokesman Scott Iverson, the company is looking into why the CPV550 drifted off frequency during our low temperature test. Since most boating takes place at temperatures well above 15F we consider the performance to be more than adequate. We didn’t check it at the high-temperature extreme because it was too big to fit in our heat chamber.
The amount of selectivity a radio has will establish how well it is able to reproduce only the signals received on a selected channel and not the signals on other nearby channels even though the latter may be very strong and close by. Standard Horizon gives the CPV550 a selectivity specification of 80 dB. A very high number ranked with the best radios we’ve reviewed.
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