B&G for the Masses
B&G for the Masses
The Triton T41 displays bring the formidable power of B&G within reach of the cost-conscious keelboat sailor. "Gear Box" from our November/December 2011 issue.
B&G has long focused its efforts on the grand-prix racing market, with its top-of-the-line H3000 series holding status as the instruments of choice for serious programs capable of using them to their fullest. But with B&G now under the umbrella of Navico (along with Simrad), the company is branching into the club racing and recreational market. The first products in this new line are the Triton T41 displays, which the company describes as “single, fully customizable units that access critical wind, depth, speed, and autopilot information.”
“We’ve designed this specifically for the sailor where the H3000 is out of their range,” says B&G’s Matthew Gregory. “And we’re the first ones to come up with a multifunction display where you can control your autopilot, too.”
For the technophiles, the instrument displays have multi-manufacturer compatibility over a NMEA 2000 data network (but not technically certified by NMEA), which means the system will work seamlessly with B&G and Simrad sensors, as well as wind, speed, depth, and heading sensors from other electronics manufacturers.
The color displays themselves are 4.1 by 4.6 inches and display beautifully crisp and legible data. The displays are “bonded,” says Gregory, which means the LCD panel is bonded to real glass to deliver better daylight clarity and eliminate moisture penetration and fogging. Power consumption, with the backlight off, is 40 milliamps, and 80 milliamps with the backlight on. The digits are generous, and the colored displace for the true- and apparent-wind angles is one of the most detailed we’ve ever seen.
When we joined B&G representatives for a demo run following the line’s September launch (onboard a Hunter 45 equipped with the incredibly slick B&G Zeus chartplotter) we used the displays to navigate a mock racecourse. It was intuitive to move among the pages and menus using up, down, and enter buttons, and a dedicated ‘page’ key to toggle through instrument functions.
For D-I-Y installers, the display requires .75-inches of depth behind the mounting plate, and its Micro-C backbone has dual male/female connectors to support both daisy chain and T connections.
The color displays, which will be available in January, are priced at $599 each, and the optional remote autopilot controller (shown above) is $299. “At that price, you can put them wherever you want,” says Gregory, “especially if you’re doing a lot of shorthanded sailing.”
