Raymarine E7 - First Impressions!

CH Smith Marine are proud to announce that Raymarine's E7 touch screen MFD has arrived in-store!

I could hardly contain my excitement as I unboxed this piece of fishfinder history. The E7 is the first unit to allow you to look at the screen remotely via an iPad, iPhone or android product.

The first thing I noticed as I lifted the box is the brilliant moulded rubber cover that so neatly houses the unit, but that wasn't what I was here for, so after briefly admiring the neat moulding I ripped it off and got stuck in.

I quickly removed the plastic surrounding it and got my first look at this stylish unit. It felt solid in my hands; quality right from the outset!

Inserting the supplied Navionics Silver Card was simple, just take it out of it's SD Card housing and then slot it into the unit. Raymarine have also left a second card space which you can put in another map card, or alternately, a blank Micro SD card to store user data such as waypoints.

Setup was a breeze, I pulled out the supplied power cable, hooked it up to power and then plugged in the unit and switched it on -- it was that easy!

Now to the best bit.... utilise the E7 Wi-Fi features and connect it to my iPad. Being the independent kind of person I am, I chose to eschew the instruction manual in favour of some hands-on experience.

I am tech savvy (most of this stuff just makes sense) so it didn't take more than 5 minutes to have an image of what I was seeing on the E7 up on my iPad screen. The simplest way to do it -- read the manual!

Once it was connected to your smartphone or tablet, it's as easy as opening the Raview application (freely downloadable from iTunes) and enjoying the show. Anything that comes up on the E7's screen will also show on your phone/tablet's screen!

The Raymarine E7 looks like it'll be a brilliant unit for those who love to cruise around or want to know exactly what's going on all the time, but if you want one get in fast as these units are extremely hard to get at the moment!

-- Sam Murdoch