I’ve had Furuno on my last 4 boats. My most recent boat purchase forced me to consider Garmin because the boat was already wired with a full suite of Garmin, with the chartplotter glassed in to the wheelhouse dash. That was almost a deal-breaker for me but I decided to give Garmin a try.
The Garmin sounder is pretty good (GT51) , but as an insurance policy, I removed the Furuno DFF3D from my last boat before selling it so I use that along side with the Garmin and meanwhile, have a Furuno 588 FCV stand-alone fish finder in the stern, so I got the sonar part of marine electronics covered with both Garmin and Furuno.
The Garmin chart plotter (8612XSV) , however, I find stunningly bad. If I compare it with the Furuno TzT I had on my last the boat, the chart plotting functions are clunky, awkward, inefficient and TEDIOUS—-in short, I am blown away that so many people choose Garmin and hold it in such high regard
Specifically, a function I use ALL THE TIME——creating a route that does not involve “own ship’s position”.........With the Furuno TimeZero software, I can get to where I want the route to begin on the chart, create the route, name it, fly over it from finish to start or start to finish, edit it as necessary, see where each waypoint is in relationship to land masses and islands etc, tweak as necessary, re-save, and do all that again with a new route, and I can do it likety-split
Garmin? No way....there is no “find on chart” function so every time you want to do a route that doesn’t involve “own ship’s position” you have to manually expand the chart, drill down on where you want the route to begin, then once you begin the route, you have to manipulate twice the amount of icons to create the route then you would have to using the Furuno software.....
Then, more importantly, when wanting to review the route, or do a “flyover”, Garmin provides a frozen screen (non-interactive) showing the route you just created...but there’s no way to zoom in and examine if the route needs editing because it’s a frozen “dead” pane, and the points in the route due to screen resolution appear so small they’re impossible to see in relation to land/islands/reefs etc....it’s mind-boggling how Neandrathal the Garmin route functions are compared to the available Furuno chartplot functions.... All I can say is....try out the Furuno TzT line of chartplotters and try and go back to your Garmin. Really.
The more recent Tzt2 and Tzt3 are not built as robust as the original TzT series but the good news is, they came down dramatically in price, so the “if money is no issue” mantra no longer works with Furuno—it is competitively priced and in some instances, is cheaper then comparable Simrad, Lowarance, Garmin or Raymarine suites
Don’t believe me? Look at the Furuno marketing videos that compare (in real time) all the high-end chart plotters on the market to the Tzt3—it’ll open your eyes
My last boat had the Furuno NXT Doppler radar....incredible piece of equipment for situational awareness and collision avoidance. Wow, I got all weepy seeing the blue and white NXT dome go off down my driveway when the new Buyer came to pick up my last boat
So now I have the Garmin Fantom that came with my new boat... it seems to work fine although the tuning doesn’t seem to be quite as precise as the Furuno and the target separation is not as crisp. The Doppler function seems to work the way the Furuno did (the red targets are coming towards you, the green colored targets are going away from you)
But what blew my mind is seeing the Furuno videos where they do a side-by-side comparison between the NXT and the Fantom and in one instance, show clear evidence how the Fantom radar completely fails to discern proper target separation between a boat and the trees in a mangrove swamp—-the target shows a one big blob on the screen. Meanwhile, the Furuno NXT clearly captures the boat target on the screen, the edge of the mangrove trees as another target, and captures the empty space between the two objects...that’ll sober you up as far as which brand has the superior technology
I’ve always done my own marine electronic installs and removals. My newest boat would require a huge amount of labor to do that, both removing the Garmin Fantom (tearing out the wheelhouse roof panels) and the Garmin chartplotter (re-glassing the console after removing the 8612XSV) so I’ll just grin and bear the Garmin....but boy am I glad I kept one of the Furuno TzT’s I had before selling my last boat...it’s mounted on the dash and is big enough to be a nuisance due to the 14” screen, but at least I have it to fall back on for ease of use and the intuitive elegant chart plotting functions it has compared to the 8612XSV
Short answer—-do yourself a favor and check out the TzT series
crappy Garmin Fantom 18 radar