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| Electronic Navigation Review |
| Review Date: Jul 2006
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Source: Motor Boat & Yachting |
Raymarine RC435i
Hardware
Raytheon introduced their Raychart 420, with a list price of £699, at the London Boat Show in 2000. It looked uncannily like a small radar, with its distinctive portrait-format screen and controls that seemed to have been modelled on their Pathfinder radar. Five years on, it has survived company name changes and management buyouts, and has evolved into the Raymarine RC435i.
Like its ancestor, the RC435i has a very simple-looking control panel consisting of just five push buttons, a rocker switch (marked Range rather than Zoom) and a cursor control pad. Also like its ancestor, the 435 uses Navionics cartography, in a card reader set into the right-hand side of the unit, though the card is now a CF memory card and it's protected by a very tight-hinged flap, rather than a rubber bung.
The big change is that the 435i has a 5.7in colour screen in place of the 420's 7in monochrome display.
Operation
The secret of the 435's very simple-looking control panel is four invisible softkeys. However, you can't see them in the photograph because the keys themselves don't exist, but their labels definitely do. They array themselves across the bottom of the screen as soon as the Enter key is pressed. To 'press' one of the virtual softkeys, it has to be selected by using the cursor to highlight the one you want, before pressing Enter again. It's slightly clunky, but the labels are clear and accurate, the sequences are perfectly logical, and plain English prompts appear on screen to help if you get stuck.
Verdict: Despite various improvements, the RC435i is starting to show signs of belonging to an older generation of plotters. There's nothing wrong with it - it's nicely presented and easy to use. But the screen is pretty grainy, and it's light on some of the bells and whistles offered by more recent designs.
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| Overall Rating: |
*
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| Guide Price: |
£816
inc VAT |
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