[Scott]

Mark....

I'll admit right up front ....I'm Furuno biased...Its what I have been around all my fishing life and all the private and commercial boat I have been on and worked for (the private boats especially ... where money was no object and they could have anything they wanted and demanded only top of the line stuff) had Furuno units...

I too am interested in the sounders that you have made mention of above....with the addition of the Furuno 582.....A couple of weeks ago I looked at some machines (Furuno stand alone units and Garmin plotters with the “black box” add on fishfinder for the 2006, 2010) I liked the Furuno's (as I mentioned above) I really liked the Garmin plotters .... but when he switched the screen to the fish finder for the Garmin and I saw "fish" symbols all over the place simulating fish .....we'll I wasn’t to pleased .... He saw my displeasure in the symbols.... and of course there is a screen to get rid of stuff like that....once the "fish" were gone and showed as regular echo return I was much happier.... its really not a bad machine..in fact it’s a machine in the running. (the fishfinder on the 2010 was real nice [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] )

I’m telling you about the Garmin plotter as the "black box" is apparently, to some degree equivalent to what the stand alone 320 is suppose to be (they didn’t have a 320C set up yet)....I tried in vain to talk to the guys at the Garmin booth at the boat show but every time we went pass it wasn’t going to happen!!! I have heard from some electronics guys that sell both Furuno and Garmin that this new sounder , the Garmin 320C, will definitely be in the mix with the best recorders..

I did finally get to the Furuno booth as I had other things I wanted to discuss with them .... I have been hot on the trail of the 582 and I asked the Furuno guys about the two machines, the 600 and the 582...really thinking they would go right to the 582 (almost twice as much $$) and I was surprised they felt that the 600 was more than adequate for a boat of this size, They felt unless I was constantly in real deep water (canyon type water at least for us NE guys) that the other machine was not needed...

To compare them this is what I see...

Furuno 600: 3.5 x 4.75 screen, 350 watts power, 0-1500'depth scale, 2 year warranty, $700 (give or take) physical dimensions 8.9h x 8.7w x 4.1d

Garmin 320C: 2.9 x 4.0 screen, 500 watts, 0-1,500'depth scale, 1 year warranty $700 (give or take) physical dimensions 6.2h x 6.3w x 3.25d

Furuno 582: 4.0 x 5.3 screen, 600 watts, 0-4,000 depth scale, 2 year warranty, $1,200 (give or take) physical dimensions 9.5h x 9.0w x 4.6d

They all have TFT screens for better daylight vision, all sorts of different screen options , colors, alarms, speed and temp, dual frequency 50/200, “waterproof” and so on…..

I still must admit I'm always drawn to the Furuno 582 as the screen always seems brighter and it is larger... for wreck fishing and diving (finding wrecks) more power will ultimately yield better detail on the floor especially for deeper water….

I can’t see you going wrong with any of them and there are lots of others out there too (Si-Tex, Lowrance etc) you get the idea…..personal preferences, features, what your going to use it for, physical size of the unit and space to mount it in (I forget what size boat you have)

Consumer Marine had nothing bad to say about any of them , they liked the 320C(felt it would be very strong competition for other units in the same price range, the 600 has been around and proven itself…..and said if I was willing to pay the extra for the 582 it was a good mix of both getting higher power and a larger screen

All boils down to how your going to use it [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]