Navionics® Boating 4+

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So first and foremost, this app is my go to for planning our fishing trips as well as locating possible new spots. This has been so accurate with the newest iPhone’s gps that we used it as a primary when the sportfish we were on lost all electronics. We came home with a boat load of fish! But the most recent update is TERRIBLE and reduced the quality to crap for relief shading. Used to see the bottom just fine and seemed worth paying for. When my subscription is up I’m going to another charting system unless they bring it back. There’s areas that were not high detailed and it made up for that with the areas that were. Now no areas are detailed other than ones that you can literally zoom in on google earth and see. And actually see better than what this app is giving you. I’ve used y’all for 5 years+. Please don’t dump on the long term guys by making the shading terrible. If Garmin forced your department to decrease the visibility on the bottom put that in the update notes so people at least have a choice going forward. There isn’t a single noticeable difference in the “new and better” shading style. I don’t know if they see it as competition and want all people to move to the chart plotter cards but it’s terrible now. If you haven’t updated your app yet and see this don’t update! Please bring back the old shading I will put y’all at five stars.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for reaching out. Are you able to provide some images of what you are seeing on your end for Relief Shading. After the update you will want to redownload the area you had previously to view the updated data if you haven’t done that yet. Email the images to help@navionics.com and in the subject line you can put, “After update Relief Shading Chart isn’t detailed”, and an agent can assist you.

Saved my life

I had the free app and went out ice fishing on lake Ontario and it was blowing a steady 30. I knew a storm was coming but the fish were biting and i had walked over 3 miles to the spot so i ended up staying way to long. By the time i was packed up there was 3 inches of snow and a total whiteout. i had very little cell service like most places on the lake and started walking the direction i knew was land. After 20-30 minutes i checked google maps to see if it had me almost at shore and it said i had actually over shot the point i went from and was on the east side of it. It was only maybe 1/3 mile away but well after what felt like closer to a mile i checked google maps again to see where i was and it said i was over a mile from land. I then remembered navionics and when i used it it showed me about half a mile from what google maps said. I decided to trust this and follow the arrow all the way back for about a mile and see what google maps says. After almost a mile following the navionics i started to see dock lights and was relieved. I checked google maps twice walking back and both times it had me over half a mile from my real location. I was out there walking for to two to two half hours between taking breaks and checking for service and i was getting exhausted. This app really did save me that night got to single digits and was gusting to 40 plus. Ill probably buy it every year until they stop updating the maps.

I have used this Ap for years, but almost useless now

Really disappointing. I use this on an iPhone 13 max. Went from great to crap in the last couple of seasons. Do not think developers have ever been on a boat, and certainly never fished. Too many things to complain about, but the main reason I will dump this is because the NavUp/CourseUp/NorthUp is so screwed up that it is right about 1 times in 8, but as soon as you zoom or recenter you get to start the whole process over and there is guarantee that you get it right no matter how many times you cycle It is maddening and basically useless if you are trying to move to a specific destination. Does not happen on my chart reader (which has the same synced data) SK I know it is a bug in the newer versions of the Ap (last 2 seasons).

Other grips are the subscription system which are terrible. I have an active subscription, but every time I look at anything it wants me to buy another subscription. Just a very frustrating Ap from start to finish. And I loved it for years!!

Developer Response ,

Thanks for reaching out. When in course up and to keep it in course up you can use the -/+ to view chart without reverting to North Up. We would be happy to open a ticket regarding the other situation you are coming across when using the Navionics app. Can you provide images or videos of what you are experiencing. Email the information to help@navionics.com and in the subject line say, “Improvement to app” and we can look to open a ticket on your behalf to our developers, so they can investigate. Once we get the email an agent can assist.