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| Electronic Navigation Review |
| Review Date: Nov 2005
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Source: Motor Boat & Yachting |
Garmin GPS Map3010C and GMR20
Garmin produce millions of GPS sets every year, and have a range that boasts fishfinders, chart plotters and a VHF radio. What was missing until now was a radar. Like the latest offerings from its more established competitors, Garmin's new radars (two of them) are networking sensors designed to plug straight into the GPSMap 3006C and 3010C multi-function displays. You don't even have to take the top off the scanner to make the connection: the power and data cables are bound together in an oval sheath, with two plugs on the end which fit straight into matching sockets on the bottom of the scanner.
To get within spitting distance of our £4,000 target, Garmin combined the smaller, 2kW scanner with the larger 10.4in display. For a company with a reputation for producing user-friendly equipment, the 3010C comes as rather a surprise: its control panel has over two-dozen keys, as well as a cursor control pad. Don't let that put you off, though: ten of the keys are alphanumeric to speed up the entry of waypoints and most of the others have self-explanatory labels, mainly for plotter functions. In radar mode, almost every control you might need is activated by pressing the adj (adjust) key, which reveals a self-explanatory menu and a set of equally self-explanatory soft key labels.
On paper, the specs of the screen are comparable with those of the other units in this group: it's 10.4in across the diagonal and has the same 640 by 480 resolution. The scanner unit, too, looks pretty reasonable: it's no match for the Furuno's open array, but it's bigger than most radomes, so it focuses the radar energy into a nice tight 3.6' beamwidth. Its output of 2kW is on the low side for a mid-range radar, but that shouldn't make too much difference on a motor boat, where the scanner is unlikely to be mounted high enough to achieve ranges much in excess of 20 miles or so.
The combination, though, was oddly disappointing. The picture looked more pixellated than the screen-resolution implied, and on close inspection it seemed to be updating itself in a series of jerks, rather than being smoothly and continuously updated. It was rather like watching video transmitted over a satellite telephone or a slow internet link. The lack of power showed up in its inability to pick up distant hilltops visible on the 4kW sets, and by missing some of the weaker contacts in the Solent. A more unexpected (and potentially more serious) problem was that although the automatic gain control worked well on long and medium ranges, it seemed to set itself far too low when the set was switched down from six miles to four.
Verdict: The Garmin 3010C is a lovely plotter, and arguably one of the most user friendly in its class, to which the GMR20 or the 4kW GMR40 scanner would be a worthwhile addition. So if your priorities are for a plotter with an add-on radar, this could be a winning combination. With the addition of a heading sensor, it would offer all the features and functions that one would expect in a modern mid-range radar/plotter, including north-up display, chart overlay, and a mini ARPA. But as a radar it didn't quite live up to our (admittedly high) expectations.
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| Overall Rating: |
*
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| Guide Price: |
£4,000
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