Navionics Marine Charts

Navionics Marine

Application: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Function: Marine navigation and charting

Cost: $9.99-$24.99

Rating: ***

If your looking for a quality charting system with fewer bells and whistles at a great price then this may be the app for you.  Navionics has been in the digital charting business since 1984 and has been a leader in supplying state of the art charts for navigation.  Navionics has worldwide coverage which is offered by region. The regions are North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania. These regions are broken into sub regional map sets.  The smaller sets start at $9.99 and the larger set like Marine Europe cost $24.99. I purchased the Caribbean and Central America package for $19.99 and was pleased by the quality and detail in the charts.

Features:

• Detailed marine charts with points of interest.
• GPS works through location services on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
• GPS worked with the external third party Dual GPS cradle.
• It has a powerful search function which helps the user find marinas, restaurants, marine repair, boat dealers, tides and currents. 
• The software can track your position in realtime on the charts.
• It has the ability to record tracks, routes and waypoints and measure distance.
• Navionics has the ability to overlay satellite shots from Google or Bing providing an Internet connection is available.
• It has Facebook and Twitter connectivity.

Pros: Navionics provides state of the art marine charts. The software works right out of the box with no setup required. The price of the sub regions is fairly cheap compared to other charting apps. I thought the overlays of the Google and Bing satellite shots was a plus.

Cons: It would be nice to have inputs for AIS tracking or other instrument types. Navionics does not give access to NOAA charts. There is no caching of the Google or Bing overlays images so an Internet connections is required to display the overlays.