Garmin, a juggernaut?
Garmin is making waves beyond its smart seeming autopilot acquisition today. For one thing, a bit of evidence in the incident involving the 15 British Royal Navy detained by Iran is the clever helicopter photo above, in which a wee little Garmin eTrex is being used to prove the ship was in international waters. Garmin was also selected as a new member of Wired magazine’s 40 most innovative companies, at 22 just above Amazon’s current rating, yet. But maybe the most interesting tell is a call I got today from a hedge fund researcher working on the investment premise that Garmin is such a juggernaut that publicly traded competitors like TomTom and Raymarine may be good shorts. I don’t know much, but I don’t think I’d bet on that.
Garmin makes some great products, unfortunately many of their GPS receivers do not transmit NMEA data. Instead they only support the proprietary Garmin data transfer mode making them incompatible with many nav software titles. Not sure why Garmin has chosen not to send NMEA data over their USB cable when many others do.
Garmin will never pass Raymarine until they change warranty. Why should any boatbuilder use navigation electronics without onboard warranty.
Garmin has probably passed Raymarine in aftermarket but not with boatbuilders.
/Marcus
B蚯ingenjn
I own a fair amount of Raymarine equipment, an ST 60+ system, an ST 8002, an ST 7002, a handheld remote, and an S3G corepack. I also have a Garmin 2006C and a Garmin 3010C. The ST 60+ has been perfect, the ST 8002 broke in the first week and I had to send it back to Raymarine for a software update, the ST 7002’s screen dropped out after a couple of months of use and the battery in the handheld remote is pretty weak (it lasts about 24 hours if you are lucky). Personally, the Raymarine stuff seems to have more bells and whistles but far less quality. On the other hand the two Garmins which are on the boat are around 5 years old and have worked perfectly since installed 5 years ago. In fact, one of the Garmins got extremely wet when Hurricane Rita brought its rain to the Gulf Coast two years ago because that storm left water standing on the screen (it is almost horizontally mounted on the pedestal) when the cover blew away. IMHO Garmin has a better built product. Given the choice, I would buy Garmin next. Most people in my area agree except for one guy I know from Austin who will buy about anything and try and convince me it is the best.
With that said, I may be biased because I am going to put in a 5212 so that I can watch TV at the helm on those long passages. The dimensions are now posted on Garmin’s site (now if we could just figure out how deep the unit is behind the mounting surface). I would be curious if any of you have any more 5212 information or if any of you saw it at Miami — I missed the show.