Argonaut 15″ monitor under $1,000, and other good new$
In a way, this photo, bigger here, doesn’t do Argonaut’s new Tflex-G615 monitor justice, but then again I took it at the NMEA Conference with a Canon XT flash aimed directly into the poor thing’s LCD. Try that with a conventional lap– or desktop screen! It is indeed noteworthy that Argonaut has come up with a “waterproof sunlight readable” monitor under a grand, but do note that its claimed 2,000 NITS transflective equivalency is figured in direct sunlight. I’m going to test one soon and will be interested to see how it does in bright situations without direct light. Note, too, all the added features—optical bonding, multiple inputs, wider range dimming, PiP, etc.—that you get with the Tflex-G515, the same underlying LCD, I think, but costing nearly three times the money.
More good pricing news:
* Apparently due mostly to lowered memory card costs (all the data for an XL3 size region usually requires two Gigs of space), Navionics has dropped the price of Platinum cards from $499 to $299. Plus there are more Platinum regions available, like in Europe, and US cards still include the right to a free Fish’n Chip (which, by the way, deserves better Panbo coverage).
* And, get this, Captn. Jack’s is now offering Maptech’s U.S. Boating Chart DVD for $19.50, still with free ground shipping, money back guarantee, and technical support. And here I thought this a great value at $50. But this special holiday price may not last long; I guess ‘Jack’ wants to get noticed.
In my humble opinion Navionics’ explanation for lower Platinum’s pricing is a “playing game” one.
The price dropped by $200. It is enough to check some on-line shops to see that 2GB Compact Flash Cards dropped down with their prices not more than $100, usually around $50. As far as I know no revolutionary memory technology has been invented recently, that could explain the reduction of $200.
I believe there are other reasons. With $299 price for Platinum Navionics is first of all hitting C-MAP’s MAX MegaWide, offering more features for the same price. Then maybe Navionics is preparing for Garmin’s kick off of BlueChart G2 cartography.
Regarding the Tflex-G615: The price is nice, but I don’t understand why a waterproof “marine monitor” would require 110v AC instead of 12 volts DC by default. Especially when most LCD displays runs on DC internally. They do offer some sort of 12 adapter, but then one ends up with 12v DC to 110v AC to ~12v DC (internally in the monitor) which isn’t very power consumption friendly.
I have two LCD displays on my boat that I removed the powerbricks and connected directly to the boat’s DC system and they work fine. It is gettng harder to find LCD displays that still have powerbricks…..
Bob