Raymarine Reviews

I've purchased and I've had about a year to get familiar with Raymarine's Smartpilot x-5 Tiller on my 28' sailboat. It's glitchy software, huge power consumption, and half-baked 'features' were a huge disappointment. I'm out well over $1000 plus hours of installation time.

Had a chance to try the new E-7 Chartplotter. The charts are NOT antialiased, they are jagged looking to distraction; this combined with a slow processor were enough to cancel out the glitzy iPad / iPhone functionality that is the gotcha for this product. Do yourself a favor, for hundreds less you can get a fast and ergonomically intuitive 740s by Garmin and be way ahead of the curve.

Raymarine needs to be a little bit more truthful in their advertising. In the case of the autopilot, some unwitting single-handers may find themselves in a lot of trouble if they try to use this equipment for serious ocean passage work.