The price of boat electronics is falling rapidly. That was one of the messages that came through strongly at the Southampton Boat Show, where a number of the key players were unveiling new products.
Rich Thoroughgood, UK marine sales manager for Garmin, said the company had really “stepped up its game” and the UK part of the operation was getting “tremendous support” from head office in Kansas. Proof of that came in the new purely UK products being launched at the show, he said.
The new 292 UK chart plotter was a new generation of the already successful Garmin 292 model. What was different was that now it was preloaded with charts covering the whole of the UK and near continent, he said..
“For the first time in the UK, we are selling a lone plotter preloaded with charts of UK and Ireland, Brest to the Netherlands and it is AIS ready,” he said. And there is another significant difference - in the price. Where last year the cost would have been £599 (inc vat) for the plotter, plus £276.99 for the chart, making a total of £836.99, this year the cost was just £599 for the plotter and chart combined.
Similarly the 298 UK, (similar to the 292 plus fishfinder) costs £736.99 including the preloaded chart, where last year, buying the chart separately, it would have cost £1,031.99.
Also new this year is the GPSMAP 278, preloaded with European street maps, for portable GPS navigation from car to boat.
Other brands are also considerably reducing the cost of electronic navigation, which is good news for yacht owners.
Leading electronic chart manufacturer C-Map has increased the regions on each of its Local cards covering the UK, doubling the area covered in each case, at the same price as before.
The extended coverage applies to both C-Map Max and NT+ charts. C-Map Local chart cartridges retail at £69 plus VAT.
For more information visit www.garmin.com
and www.c-map.co.uk
