2. Figure Out the Brand That’s Right for You

Electronics brands have always had their strong suits—back in the day, one company was known for fishfinders, another made their bones with autopilots—you always bought this make of VHF because that’s what your dad had and he chose it because… well you don’t recall but he could tell you if he were here. That’s why older boats had those mishmash helms with all different screens and boxes and components.

“Back 15 years ago we would cherry-pick everybody’s line,” says Robert Kinney of Alcom Marine Electronics in Costa Mesa, California. “Everybody buys a Furuno radar, because that was the best. Everybody had a Robertson autopilot because that was the best, and so on. And now the systems are designed so you can’t do that. I was on a boat today, the guy bought the new Furuno deal but kept all his existing equipment. He had a standalone radar, had a Northstar GPS, had a Simrad autopilot, had a standalone Furuno fishfinder, right down out of the hymnal.”

The electronics brands today, Furuno, Garmin, Navico (comprising Simrad, Lowrance, and B&G brands), and Raymarine— known as the Big Four in industry parlance— still have their strong suits. The challenge is now everything is integrated. Because so much of a system’s capability is derived from its software and processing power (these are just specialized computers inside), the components from one manufacturer may not work as well with the multifunction display of another, if at all. It’s one way that manufacturers make systems more desirable. For example, if you want Navico’s low-emission 4G Broadband Radar system, you’re going to have to go with a Navico-based system. Likewise for Garmin’s DownVü and SideVü scanning sonar, though other brands offer similar functionality.