We compared boater’s navigation apps – they have surprisingly big differences

You shouldn’t go out on the water without a map. But which should you take with you, a paper or a digital map? The correct answer is both. The navigation application complements the paper map appropriately and vice versa. Navigation applications that work on a phone or tablet can be used even when the boat has a fixed chart plotter. The phone has its own positioning and runs on a battery, so you can stay on the map even when the boat’s electrical system or battery fail, for example. Another good reason for a separate navigation application is that different applications and chartplotters use different map materials. For example, in my own use, the plotter has a vector map and the phone has a raster map that looks identical to the paper map.

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