A marine GPS, whether a standalone navigator, chartplotter, or plotter fishfinder combo is going to be your favorite piece of marine electronics when you’re running the tight confines of a wily inlet at o’dark thirty or looking for your favorite fishing hole.
Joining a chartplotter and a fishfinder into a single unit further enhances the usefulness of this particular piece of marine electronics gear. They combine numerous functions into a single display.
Standalone marine GPS navigators or chartplotters start at around $400 and go up as you add features and increase screen size. Other types of marine electronics are also being combined with GPS chartplotters today.
 A number of marine GPS chartplotter combo tests including the Standard Horizon CP180, Raymarine A60, Sitex Colormax 5E, and Lowrance LMS-525C DF have been posted. |
See why a chartplotter fishfinder combo is a good choice for many powerboaters, sailors, cruisers, and fishermen. And why they have become so popular.
You not only have plotter sounder combo units like the Garmin 546s, but chartplotters like the Humminbird 597ci HD DI that couples both a standard sounder with more sophisticated down imaging using a three frequency transducer to produce near photo quality images of what is down below your boat.
You’ll also find plenty of new chartplotters with the ability to display engine data via a NMEA 2000 network connection.
Many will also display nearby ship information from an AIS receiver or be your source for timely weather when coupled to a satellite weather receiver.
It has only been in the last few years that these astounding improvements to affordable marine electronics have taken place.
How We Test Chartplotters
Normally we test marine chartplotters aboard our one of our test boats. We aim for a competitive analysis by comparing at least two or more like units during each review.
One of the most important features of any gps chartplotter or chartplotter fishfinder combo unit is how well you can see the screen under a variety of conditions. We appraise this by judging viewability both day and nigh
Displays are rated under a wide variety of lighting conditions ranging from bright sunlight, to cloud obscured daylight, to nighttime conditions. We look at the screen from various angles, with and without polarized sunglasses, and when applicable using different background color palettes. After the sun goes down we rate the screen for night viewability and turn an eye tow