Navionics vs Garmin with G2 Vision HD

[Josserman]

I’ve been struggling to find a GPS navigation system and have been going back and forth between my Garmin GPS Map 547 with basic phone connectivity and Navionics. I ordered the Navionics upgrade for auto chart plotting and unfortunately it won’t build auto charts in most of the waters close to where I slip and boat.

Yesterday I gave in and spent the $350 for the Garmin G2 Vision, and was pissed to see after you can’t auto navigate off the phone, seems you can setup destinations from phone, but it needs to sync with the Garmin unit and do it’s autonavigating there. I’ll got to boat later today to confirm it works. I did open a support ticket a few weeks ago to confirm it would do the autonavigate in my area, and the engineer did a little demo/poc which was successful, he just didn’t mention it was only on the gps unit and not phone (or I missed that)

One big plus I wanted to share with the G2 Vision is that you get full satalite maps now in the active captain app. I also find the Garmin active captain community has more details on the various locations. I’m sure this may vary by region based off what the communities there use more.

Overall since I have the GPS unit, I don’t regret making my purchase, just having the satalite view alone makes a huge difference to me, knowing it will sync with my box. Looking forward to seeing autonavigate work!

 

[bronze_10]

I bought a card from ebay for a little over 100 bucks... And used it for ft Lauderdale and bimini. I found out with mine that you may need to get to a known body of water before it set yiuba track to follow. Meaning when we launched in ft Lauderdale it would not auto chart a map to bahia mar untill I reaches the icw .. Then it worked very well.

 

[Josserman]

That's what I experienced with Naviaonics, but according to the rep at Garmin, when he tested it in my channel it worked, we will see. Great feedback about the ebay card working, so you can still get updates with that?

 

[Jace LaValle]

Also wondering if you still get map updates. Amazon has some used g2 vision cards for my area for around 60 bucks. But want to be sure they’ll still update.