I missed your installation post when you posted it a couple years ago. Thanks for the link. Your installation looks awesome!
I know we all have our prefs, but here's my tangential 2¢ regarding Simrad vs. Garmin:
My 255 FSH has all Simrad/Lowrance/Navico electronics, including an NSS12 evo3S as my main MFD, and a Halo 20+ radar with HS60 GPS compass. My other boat has a Garmin system with multiple 86-series and x3-series MFDs and a Fantom 24x radar and MSC 10 GPS compass... at nearly twice the cost of my Simrad system. That boat came with a single Garmin MFD and a Fantom 18 radar. I swapped out
all of the electronics but stuck with Garmin, thinking that an upgrade would give me better results.
The Simrad system is so much better for collision avoidance that the Garmin system seems like a toy — an incredibly expensive toy at that. Garmin's MARPA implementation is an effin' joke — it's 100% useless because it can't differentiate an actual collision target vs. some random unmoving object on a shoreline. I actually have to
turn off MARPA on my Garmin because it just adds useless noise to the picture.
The Simrad will image, MARPA track, and warn me if I'm on a collision course with a dinghy, a kayak, or even a swimmer in the water! The Garmin has trouble imaging a small sailboat even in ideal conditions.
In addition to that, the Simrad can reliably image a single pelican a mile away. Meanwhile, the Garmin has problems finding flocks of birds no matter their distance and no matter what gain or filtering I set on the Garmin. So for finding birds (and therefore fish), Simrad radar hands down is better than Garmin.
Moreover, the radar-chart overlay on Simrad looks great and is very easy to decipher. Garmin's radar-chart overlay has poor color differentiation and too much extraneous detail, so coupled with Garmin's poor radar performance to begin with, you really need to run a second radar-only screen on the Garmin instead of a single overlay screen.
Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but Garmin autopilot will not integrate with any trolling motor other than Garmin's (high-priced) Force and Force Kraken. At least with Simrad, you have the choice of going MotorGuide or Rhodan. I use the navigate-to-cursor feature of my Simrad's side and downscans all the time. If I see interesting structure or a group of fish on the sonar image, I can just touch the point on the image and command my trolling motor to take me to the actual location that corresponds to the cursor on the sonar image.
And another pain-point is that Garmin pretty much requires you to run the ActiveCaptain app to sync waypoints, tracks, and other user data, as well as apply updates (unless you want to use microSD sneakernet between your laptop and the MFDs). Meanwhile on my Simrad/Lowrance/Navico systems (in addition to my FSH, my two fishing kayaks also have Simrad/Lowrance MFDs), all I have to do is power them on, and they seamlessly sync and download updates as needed via my docks' wi-fi networks.
Okay, that rant was
much longer than I originally though it'd be
... and maybe not so useful to anyone who's already decided on going with Garmin.
Oh, a whole 'nother thing to consider for your upcoming purchase of the Sport H — what's the autopilot integration with the Sport H's Helm Master look like?
My Garmin boat has Yamaha outboards and Helm Master EX. Getting level-3 autopilot (turn-by-turn Auto Guidance as well as regular ol' go-to waypoint(s)) to function as designed was a PITA — no thanks to Yamaha or Garmin, with each party blaming the other on why my autopilot wasn't working. But once I got it functional (after lots of trial and error with various Yamaha CL+ & J1939 doohickies), autopilot has been a real pleasure to use. I don't think I'll ever buy another offshore-capable boat without autopilot again.