Northstar discovers cousins, lots of them!

As previewed at METS, the Northstar family has no less than 29 new members, which means that the brand now offers full product suites for most any size boat. Of course most of you won’t even need the bigger image to realize that these are very similar to existing Navman products, only with black buttons instead of blue ones. In fact, my understanding is that most of the 27 ‘new’ Explorer units are exactly like their Navman counterparts, though a few have upgrades like higher resolution screens, and—good news—none have risen in price. 
  The one completely new unit is the M84, at right above, which is an 8.4” version of the Northstar M120, which is essentially the same as the Navman 8120 I’ve been testing. In other words, both of the new M Series units should be able to hook up to either SmartCraft engines or stand alone fuel flow meters to show a nifty screen like the one below (never mind the road shown running over the Fox Island Thorofare—just another one of those chart anomalies we should be on the watch for!).
  So far only the M84 is detailed on Northstar’s Web site, and I believe that all these new relatives may retain the Navman name in certain countries like South Africa where it’s much better known than Northstar’s. Finally, whatever the name, most of these plotters have recently acquired excellent AIS display ability, to be illustrated in a coming entry.