Enclosed radars compared, including Garmin, Raymarine, and Simrad

I often shy away from recommending one manufacturer’s products over another. I feel the comparison is usually highly subjective and what works for me may not work for others. But, an on-the-water comparison of Garmin, Raymarine, and Simrad’s current radar units allows all of us to see the results and decide for ourselves what we like best.

First, an acknowledgment of how far we’ve come. Each of these radars yielded impressive results. I would happily go to sea with any of them and sleep well with the knowledge I have a high-performance radar system that will provide valuable aid allowing safe navigation in all conditions. As you will see, in differing situations, the performance of the three units varies. But, in all cases, the worst performing unit still performed very well.

Although radar performance likely isn’t the sole factor boaters consider when they purchase an electronics suite, I do think it’s highly informative to know how the units compare. Please know that typically your radar unit must match your displays. If you have the luxury of sufficient space at your helm, you could have multiple brands of MFDs, allowing you to choose the best radar for your situation.

The radars

For this test, I have equipped Panbo(at) with a Garmin Fantom 18x, Raymarine Quantum 2, and a Navico Halo 20+. Although the Navico unit I have is branded with Lowrance decals, Navico radars will work with any current B&G, Lowrance, or Simrad MFD. I’d hoped to be able to test a Furuno DRS2DNXT also, but unfortunately, Furuno didn’t have any test units available.

The $2,200 Fantom 18x, $2,260 Quantum 2, and $2,300 Halo 20+ are close enough in price that I don’t believe cost will be a factor among the options.

All three units are solid-state pulse compression radar scanners with doppler object detection. The power output of the units varies from the 20-watt Quantum 2 to the Garmin 18x with 50 watts. The Halo 20+ sits in between with a 25 watt output.

The test

I feel I should start with a disclaimer. The sum of my radar design experience is zero. I have used many radars in my time on the water, but my experience is solely as a user. I’ve also had the benefit of speaking with several people who design radar systems for a living. So, I can discuss what I like and what I don’t, but I also probably know just enough to be dangerous.

The first several tests were done on the Caloosahatchee River with all three radars set to their harbor presets. These presets tune the radars for short range and close targets. The only parameter I changed from each preset is range. I set all three radar displays to show 1/2 mile range so the scale is the same.

In the pictures above, you can see that each radar is at a different height and there are several potential sources of interference on the boat. I felt like the interference sources reflect the real world in which most radar units are installed. But, three radar units transmitting at the same time within a few feet of each other on a 22-foot boat is a little unusual. I didn’t see strong evidence of interference and did run each radar independently to verify their performance wasn’t noticeably different with multiple scanners transmitting.

Test 1 – leaving the marina

My first screenshots come from a relatively wide section of the Caloosahatchee river with a bridge span crossing the river. The three screenshots above are in alphabetical order, but conveniently, that also happens to be my order of preference. I found in this situation, the Garmin produced the least detail. The Raymarine adds more of the bridge and additional details behind some of the large land masses. Finally, the Simrad produced the most detailed return; it clearly shows a lot of detail behind the land mass ahead of the boat.

It’s worth noting that the Garmin Fantom 18x has two options for auto gain. The unit can be set to auto high or auto low. By default, the harbor mode I used for testing on the Caloosahatchee puts the Fantom in auto low gain mode. It’s likely the unit would have picked up more detail in auto high, though likely at the expense of additional noise in the return. I chose to leave the unit in low and stick with the defaults for all three units.

Test 2 – downtown Fort Myers

The second set of screenshots was taken a little further down the river. The radars performed in a similar order but I think we’re seeing some differences in the way the radars handled the situation. As you can see in the Google Earth view, there are three bridges in view. The boat is nearly directly under the middle bridge.

I’m concerned that the Fantom 18x seems to have lost large sections of the bridges both ahead and aft of the boat. The Quantun 2’s returns also seemed to expand some of the target returns in an exaggerated manner and distorted the forward most bridge while missing a small section of it. The Simrad returns are again the clearest and show all three bridges and the shore based returns.

Lofton’s Island, the small island opposite the City of Fort Myers Yacht Basin in the Google Earth image, also served to differentiate the radar performance. Once again, I found the Halo 20+’s definition to be the best, though it didn’t paint the low lying middle portion of the island very well. The Quantum 2 did a slightly better job with the center of the island, but overall the returns were less well defined and precise. The Fantom 18x did a good job with the portion of the island closest to the channel but completely lost the middle and only picked up a little bit of the furthest portion of the island.

Test 3 – Offshore, SW of Sanibel

Getting off shore a little and into a more open environment with longer ranges definitely changed things. I changed all three radars from their harbor presets to their offshore modes.

Where previously the Garmin radar hadn’t fared as well, it came into its own out here. I suspect the additional power of the Fantom helped it fare better than the Quantum 2 or Halo 20+. Although there was more noise in the Garmin’s return, I felt that overall it did a better job accurately displaying the surrounding topology.

Both Raymarine and Simrad’s displays were cleaner than Garmin’s. There was less noise on the display. But with that reduced clutter, came less detail. I thought it was most noteworthy at the top of the image directly off the bow of the boat. The low-lying land is correctly displayed by the Fantom, but the Quantum 2 and Halo 20+ miss the sides of the land mass ahead.

One noteworthy miss for the Halo 20+ is the section of causeway park about five miles off the port bow. It’s simply not there on the Halo 20+ while both the Fantom 18x and Quantum 2 picked it up. There is a possibility that the Simrad’s performance was impacted because of obstructions towards the port bow, though I didn’t notice any other deficits in sensitivity in that area.

Doppler presentation

All three radar scanners are capable of doppler target identification. Effectively, this means that each of these radars can highlight and color code moving objects on the radar display. Targets moving towards you are one color while targets moving away are another. The obvious colors would be red and green, but most radars — including all three of these — use red as the primary color for all returns. So, without changing the primary color, other colors need to be selected.

Garmin and Simrad take this approach and use purple and green and yellow and blue, respectively, instead of red and green for their return colors. Raymarine takes a pretty different approach. When the radar is put into doppler mode, the non-doppler returns are changed, by default, to white and displayed in a somewhat difuse manner. You can change the color scheme, as can be seen above, but the difuse presentation doesn’t change. It’s a pretty different way of doing it and I think overall I prefer Garmin and Simrad’s approach.

Final thoughts

As I mentioned at the top, I’d go to sea with any of these units and be very confident doing so. The performance of these small, relatively affordable radars is quite impressive. Particularly compared to a magnetron based unit from not too many years ago. Although your choice of MFD brand determines your radar options, all the options available are strong. I’m anxious to hear what you think about the images you see above. I’m aware my testing methodology doesn’t allow all the variables to be controlled. But, I hope this test proves useful in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of these three radars.