Furuno DRS4W 1st Watch Wireless Radar

$1,695; www.furunousa.com

For a while I thought that Furuno USA might not even carry the unique DRS4W 1st Watch Wireless Radar that was introduced in Europe last March, and at one point I even found myself writing “I don’t see the problem the Furuno Wi-Fi Radar is solving.” One issue is a marketing video showing a young couple happily using Furuno’s standalone Marine Radar iOS app in the open cockpit of their cruising sailboat with no normal instrument or chart displays in sight and no reference to the problem of seeing an iPad in bright sunlight. The video just doesn’t look much like real boating, and hence doesn’t make the case for how the 1st Watch fits into a full-fledged navigation and collisionavoidance routine. Also easy to question is the value of eliminating the data cable when you do have to wire the DRS4W for 12- or 24-volt power. In fact, the Furuno DRS2 I’ve been long testing on Gizmo— which is a much more full featured radar fit into the same sleek 19-inch diameter casing the Wi-Fi radar uses—came with a nice combined Ethernet and power cable that was easy to split and connect once I’d fished it down the mast. But my initial skepticism began to melt when Furuno USA showed me 1st Watch on the water and told me about future app integration. It was good to see how the new radar can use at least some true color to indicate target density, even if iPad glare obscured it, and the interface is as easy as advertised. It’s slick, for instance, to get look-ahead and offset radar imaging just by dragging the screen around with a fingertip. More exciting, I think, is the plan to overlay 1st Watch radar on the already excellent TimeZero charting app developed by partner Nobeltec. Moreover, the 1st Watch will be able to host an onboard network so that the two supported iPads can also get AIS, GPS, heading, depth, wind, and other data. In other words, Nobeltec TimeZero combined with the 1st Watch and a small sensor network could make for an elegant and economical navigation system with no regular multifunction display involved. Note that the latest iPad has an anti-reflective screen coating and I don’t think that Furuno has yet revealed all its 1st Watch cards.