The Marine Electronics Hub
Continuing my new product tour from the 2026 Discover Boating Miami International Boat Show, the next stop is at the Navico booth for the Simrad NSO 4 and B&G Zeus SRX. These two families of chartplotters sit atop Simrad and B&G’s lineups. They also complete each company’s transition to products based on Navico’s NEON operating system.
Digital Yacht has been on a roll recently with clever, relatively simple products to solve specific needs. Well, they’ve done it agian. This time, Digital Yacht has introduced a small converter that connects to Victron products via Bluetooth, convert their data, and share it on a NMEA 2000 network. The veLINK gateway solves problems on boats without a GX device and for Victron devices without wired connectivity.
The electronics area of the 2026 Discover Boating Miami International Boat Show is noticeably smaller this year. In years past, the show featured a separate electronics room. This year, that room is a food court and the electronics area is on the main floor of the convention center. Although the area itself might be smaller, there were still quite a few exciting announcements and new equipment on display. First up are two different lines of Furuno MFDs designed for smaller boats.
The Quatix 8 might just accomplish something no other Garmin (or any other brand) watch has done so far. Displace my Apple Watch. I am deeply invested in Apple’s ecosystem. I use an iPhone, iPad, Mac, Airpods, and Apple Watch. So, getting me to switch out one of those pieces is an uphill battle. The Quatix 8 offers enough improvements over prior Quatix watches, and my Apple Watch Ultra, to make a strong case for daily wear. If you’re like me and happy with your current wristwear, you might be wondering what the Quatix could possibly deliver to compell a change. For me, the answer comes down to four things — not all of them marine related — that weigh the scale in Garmin’s favor. Those four things are: thorough integration with Garmin navigation electronics, extremely long battery life, robust fitness features, and now, satellite communications from my wrist.
Within a few months of leaving to travel America’s Great Loop, I decided there were two things my boat was sorely lacking. The first was a set of wireless headsets or marriage savers — rarely has a product been so accurately named. The second tool I found myself lacking was a pair of stabilized binoculars. A few nausea inducing episodes of trying to read the transom of a moving boat from the pitching deck of Have Another Day convinced me of the utility. While the marriage savers were quite affordable, the stabilized binoculars left a larger dent in my wallet. So, I was quite pleased to have the opportunity to try out SI-TEX’s Sirius stabilized binoculars and their much more affordable cost of entry.
FLIR’s Ocean Scout Pro is the latest iteration of a handheld, thermal scope from the market leader in thermal night vision products. The Ocean Scout Pro boasts a high-resolution, high frame rate sensor, simple operation, and a companion app for both Android and iOS. The updated Ocean Scout Pro offers streaming to a mobile app (though not without some frustrations, more on that later) and a bright easy to see viewfinder. So, how does the Ocean Scout Pro do on the water? Let’s take a look.
Blue Heron is a relatively small battery brand. So, you may not have heard of them as they have less marketing power than the bigger battery brands I’ve reviewed. But, that doesn’t stop them from offering a premium battery with impressive features and customer service. Perhaps in part because of their smaller size, Blue Heron provides services not typical of similar batteries, like testing and balancing the batteries prior to shipping. Let’s take a look at the battery, the service, and the value that Blue Heron offers.
Many people spend halloween trick or treating or at parties. Not me, I travelled, along with several other marine journalists, to the Florida Keys to spend a weekend aboard two boats equipped with Dometic’s DG3 gyroscopic stabilizer. The time onboard provided ample opportunity to experience the impact the DG3 makes on the rolling action of the vessel. Plus, Dometic provided one relatively common hull, a 37-foot center console, and a far less typical hull, a 35-foot, aluminum, power catamaran. With two full days on the water, I got the full experience of what the DG3 can do and how it goes about doing it. Read on for a full report and my thoughts on the DG3 compared to Seakeeper’s gyros.
I wasn’t kidding in my Vanemar writeup when I mentioned boat monitoring products’ strong showing at the NMEA’s 2025 conference. Continuing with that theme, let’s take a look at Sensar Marine’s Expansion Hub. The Expansion Hub pairs to their existing monitor to bring more capabilities to the original monitor without sacrificing the monitors’ core strengths.
Boat monitoring isn’t a new category, but looking around the exhibition hall at the 2025 National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) conference, you might think differently. The hall featured at least eight companies exhibiting boat monitoring products and nearly half the entrants in the Best New Product awards were boat monitors. So, why so much activity in boat monitoring? Frankly, I’m not entirely sure. However, there is a noticeable improvement in the quality of all the monitors I saw. I am excited by the refinement and advances in the products on display. Speaking of refinement, Turkey based Vanemar was there displaying their system with wireless sensors, NMEA 2000 integration, video capabilities and a slick app.
