Jet Boat or Sterndrive

[2kwik4u]

Love my MR1s...

Man, that looks about as "dead heat" of a drag race as I've seen in a long time.

Nice to know, despite the displacement difference between the MR1's and 1.8's, as well as the hull weight increase from '08 to '17 the WOT performance of that boat hasn't changed much over the years.

How's the sound difference between them? The 1.8's only rev to ~7,800 and the MR1's go to 10k-ish right?

 

[BlkGS]

My personal opinion (for what that's worth), max throttle is gonna be a bit loud either way. That said, I usually cruise at like 60% throttle, which is enough to get on plane but not usually too much faster than all the other boats on the lake. That's ~7000 rpm on my 23', would like be more like 5k for the tr1s? Kind of a moot point to me there, still pretty high, maybe a bit less high pitched, but they're both small 4 cylinders, not a deep v8 growl. I usually have the stereo up, so there noise doesn't bother me.

 

[2kwik4u]

My personal opinion (for what that's worth), max throttle is gonna be a bit loud either way. That said, I usually cruise at like 60% throttle, which is enough to get on plane but not usually too much faster than all the other boats on the lake. That's ~7000 rpm on my 23', would like be more like 5k for the tr1s? Kind of a moot point to me there, still pretty high, maybe a bit less high pitched, but they're both small 4 cylinders, not a deep v8 growl. I usually have the stereo up, so there noise doesn't bother me.

Sounds the same as mine.

I came from a 3.0L 4cyl sterndrive, and moved into a 1.8L 4cyl jet drive. They're both about the same level of sound in terms of raw dB. The 1.8's run a higher rev for a given speed so it's a high pitch sound. Not really any louder than the sterndrive, just different. I couldn't have a conversation in either at WOT, and at cruise the 1.8 might be a shade louder overall. I usually run about 6-6.5k rpm at cruise. Only stereo upgrades I have are the Polk DB651s's and the Wetsounds amplified soundbar, and we can easily hear the stereo plenty clearly at cruise at ~50-60% volume or so.

Would I love for it to be quieter? Yes. Is the current sound level a problem? No.

 

[OrangeTJ]

I'd personally take jet drive over stern in an all-purpose family runabout (I voted with my checkbook already, back in 2012). They are very easy to own and operate and have a great recreational layout that works for lots of uses. We've subsequently moved to a v-drive but that's a different animal and not what the OP asked about.

For me, the thing I liked the least about our Yamaha SX210 was the noise. At WOT it may not be a whole lot louder than most any other boats at WOT, so that isn't the issue. The issue comes when you're trying to slowly slip along at sub-planing speeds, such as you might do on a "sunset cruise" or in a scenic area where you just want to relax and talk with the friends on the boat. Our Yamaha ran 4K rpm to go 8-9 mph and 5K to run 11 or so, then would come up on plane and cruise 25 mph or so at 6K rpm. The hull and pump design just requires a ton or rpm at displacement speeds, which was really loud and for me got really annoying when wanting to go slow. So, on our SX210, about the only speed at which you could easily hold a conversation with passengers was at idle or just above. That's a pretty stark contrast to our current boat, where at just about anything short of 90% throttle, it simply isn't at all difficult to carry on a conversation with anybody in the boat. The other thing I didn't really like was that it was very difficult to maintain a speed juuuuust above planing speed without a lot of throttle management. That made pulling wakeboarders well a challenge. That issue may no longer exist with the boats that have electronic speed control, though.

 

[212s]

So, on our SX210, about the only speed at which you could easily hold a conversation with passengers was at idle or just above.

You can't compare old to new. Yamaha has come a long way in the noise department. Around 2016 or so they started adding more noise reduction and now they're much quieter. The older models had very little or no sound dampening materials. Today's models are reasonable and we can talk over the engine noise while cruising up to about 35mph, but after that wind noise makes the engine noise a non-issue.

 

[OrangeTJ]

That's great, for sure. I knew they had started doing the "quiet cruise" thing with the 24 footers in 2016 but I hadn't seen that they subsequently expanded that to the 21s. Between that and the "articulating keel", it seems Yamaha has addressed the two primary achille's heels of the boats - noise and tracking. Good on them.