2022 Raymarine Element 7hv review

The software used in the Element series looks and feels like its more expensive Axiom sibling, even down to the hardware that drives it; Element devices use the same high-end quad-core processor as the Axiom devices.

With Element’s arrival, boat owners suddenly had the option of an affordable unit with cutting-edge processing grunt – Element’s competitors still use slower dual-core processors – that brought an end to frustratingly slow and laggy graphics.

Raymarine’s Element series comes in two versions, as an “S” for sailboats featuring a chartplotter with radar compatibility and basic sonar, and the fishing-focused “hv” models. Screens come in three sizes; 7.0, 9.0 and 12.0 inches.

The model we’re testing here is the 7.0-inch Raymarine Element 7hv, which we’re fitting to a 4.8-metre runabout.

Shop around and you can get the walk-up Raymarine Element with the 7.0-inch screen for around $1200 (if it is via a retailer such as Anaconda, where I sourced mine, it's also delivered to your door). While this is about the same as entry-level pricing for Element’s competitors, there is a big difference in what you get.

The biggest difference is speed. At this price point, dual-core systems used to dominate. What that means is that the electronics driving the software uses two processors working in tandem to crunch the numbers.

However, the Raymarine Element has a quad-core processor, giving it a lot more number-crunching power compared with a dual-core system. That translates to the ability to do things much faster than a dual-core system – on a chartplotter and fishfinder, that means faster loading, faster redrawing and sharper graphics performance.

The downside is that the quad-core system will draw more power than the twin-core one, and throw out more heat.

You can see where some of the corners were cut while developing the Element series. Raymarine has gone for a full plastic housing for the unit, where the Axiom series uses a more robust aluminium one.

However, while the Axiom units are quite deep, the Element series housing is surprisingly shallow, making it much easier to flush-mount in smaller boats.

You’ll also note that the Element series uses push-button controls and toggles built onto the edge of the unit to navigate the menus, compared with Axiom’s more premium touchscreen. It makes the Element a rather wide rectangular unit when paired with the smallest screen.

Likewise, rather than adopt the feature-rich LightHouse operating system developed for the Axiom series of plotters and fishfinders and supporting high-end functions you wouldn’t expect to see on a trailer boat such as autopilots and bow thrusters and so on, the Element series uses a cut-down version called LightHouse Sport.

The Element’s fishfinder scans at either 1.2MHz for shallow water or 350kHz for deeper water. It can display what it sees as either a downscan, side-scan looking left and right out of the sides of the boat, or create a realistic 3D view.

The need to equip the Raymarine Element series with navigation buttons means the units are noticeably wider for the same depth compared with the touchscreen Axiom units. Rubber grommets in each corner hide where the flush-mount screws fix.

The buttons and MicroSD card slot are all arranged on the right side of the unit. On the smallest unit, the panel makes the Element almost twice as wide as it is tall – important to consider when you’re flush-mounting it.

At the top of the push-button panel is a bright orange waypoint button. It’s a handy way to quickly archive a new fishing hotspot, providing a one-touch function to record the unit’s location with an icon on the chartplotter. It can also serve as a fuss-free man-overboard marker, or for retrieving cray pots.

Below that is a home button that takes you straight to the main menu, and a button to open up sub-menus for each of the “apps” that form the numerous chartpotter and fishfinder functions.

The unit also has an eight-way toggle that makes moving around a chart easy, a back button, an “OK” button to select the functions you want to use, and “+” and “-” buttons for zooming in and out on maps and apps.

A handy feature is three shortcut buttons that can tie to the most-used apps.

All the buttons have haptic feedback that gives them a distinct “click”. They take a decent amount of pressure to get that click – handy when you’re bouncing along over the water and risk pushing the wrong button, but dockside it feels a bit excessive.

Below everything is the power button that doubles as a waterproof seal for the MicroSD slot. The MicroSD card is recessed deep in the unit with only a small portion sitting proud of the slot, so removing it can be difficult.

The screen is surprisingly easy to read in bright sunlight and with polarised lenses on. A dark mode helps at night.

One of the things that attracted me to the Raymarine Element was the constant updates that the company rolls out to its more feature-rich Axiom range of products. Not just bug fixes, the updates have also brought big lifts in functionality that have suited the bigger boat market that Axiom’s products target.

At the time of this review, Raymarine was a few months into release v3.15.50. It doesn’t add any new features relevant to Australian owners but squashes a few bugs and adds LightHouse Charts, Raymarine’s in-house mapping system, to some overseas markets.  

Two of the things that attracted me to the Raymarine Element 7hv were its wireless internet connectivity and compatibility with Navionics charts.

However, both come with caveats.

In terms of wireless connectivity, I can update the Raymarine Element 7’s software via my home Wi-Fi network when it is sitting in the driveway. But the plotter won’t wirelessly update the maps.

For that, you have to take the MicroSD card out of the Raymarine Element 7hv with some difficulty and being careful not to drop and lose it, take it inside, plug the card into an adapter, fire up the laptop, launch Navionics’ bespoke software, and update the card.

If you have the Navionics app on your smartphone, the app will recognise the chartplotter but any updates you make on the phone will not be transferred to the Raymarine Element 7hv. This appears to be an issue with Navionics, which happens to belong to the same group of companies that owns marine chartplotter brand Garmin, a competitor to Raymarine.

My dream of sitting in the lounge room fixing the positions of boats on Google Maps snapped in fishing spots, and then instantly uploading their location to the Raymarine Element 7hv, were dashed.

The big benefit of the Raymarine Element 7hv’s in-built Wi-Fi system, though, is that if you ever decide to add a plug-and-play Raymarine Quantum wireless radar system, it’s just clicking a few buttons; support is built right into the unit.

Raymarine’s new RayConnect app, which features screen mirroring, also will not work with the plotter, although it appears that LightHouse Charts, Raymarine’s in-house mapping system, may soon be compatible.

The Raymarine Element 7hv also has a dashboard function that can draw NMEA 2000 or Raymarine SeaTalkng data and display it on the screen, making it compatible with up to two outboard engines, VHF marine radios, digital dashboards and up to four fuel tank sender units.

You can even plug in a Raymarine EV-1 heading sensor that can read pitch, yaw, roll and direction – handy for setting your Element’s bearings far more accurately.

From a cold start, the Raymarine Element 7hv takes about a minute to boot up – it seems an aeon when you’re ready to cast off from the jetty and head out. You always need to acknowledge a warning about not relying solely on the plotter for navigating before you can access the main screen.

The various functions the Raymarine Element 7hv can perform are split into Chart and Fishfinder apps that users can customise just like on a smartphone. Each app can show a combination of between one and four different functions on the screen at once depending on how it has been customised.

The unit comes with several pre-installed apps that help get you on the water, with plenty of spare slots to create your own.

You can also take snapshots of screens, but they’re saved as a very low 800 by 480 resolution image – surprising when you can have up to 32GB of memory card onboard. They're so low resolution that we have had to use photos for this review rather than suffer Raymarine's low-res screen grabs.

The Raymarine Element 7hv is currently compatible with Navionics charts and C-Maps. A free 12-month subscription for a geocached version of Navionics Plus was thrown in with the plotter at the time of purchase, worth around $170. You can step up to Navionics Platinum for a more premium version with higher levels of detail including satellite overlay.

Raymarine is close to rolling out its own in-house maps, called LightHouse Charts, in Australia. It appears to be a similar feature-rich package to Navionics Platinum with a subscription option that includes map updates, pre-set points of interest, and real-world map overlays.

The chart app has a number of different modes you can use, ranging from a simple map with basic depth shading, a detailed mode with depths and navigational markers, a fishing mode with detailed depth contours, a running mode that reduces visual clutter and pushes the icon marking the boat’s position to the bottom of the screen, and a tide mode showing animated conditions in real-time.

You can set up the chart app so that as soon as you get above a certain speed, the app automatically switches over to the running mode.

Navigating to waypoints is easy, although the Raymarine Element 7hv will draw a straight line to your destination rather than use the boat’s draft – which you input when setting up the device for the first time – to set a real-world route.

You can also save tracks, but the journey is recorded as a series of vectors rather than a true path to cut down on the number of reference points logged – there’s a maximum of just 5000.

One feature I like for inland waters is the RealBathy function, which records real-world contour lines. I’d never realised the contours at one of my local lakes were so poorly defined in Navionics.

This is where the Raymarine Element 7hv excels. Users have four functions to choose from to help them hunt fish; RealVision 3D, SideVision and DownVision with 1.2MHz (best in shallow water) and 350kHz (best in deep water) settings, and conical 200kHz CHIRP sonar.

To get access to every fishfinding function, including the RealVision 3D, you’ll need to match the unit with the HV-100 transducer. It comes with 6.0 metres of cable to suit most trailer boats.

The colourful, high-contrast sonar display remains the easiest way to spot fish, but the add-on functions of the Raymarine Element 7hv help you understand exactly what you’re looking at.

The fishfinding screens tend to work better in tandem, and at different depths. For instance, DownVision pairs well with the traditional sounder for deeper water so you can spot the structure where fish aggregate, while the SideVision and RealVision 3D are a good combination for hunting the shallows for fish hiding in snags lining the bank.

You can use the toggle switch to highlight individual screens and zoom in and out to get a different view of the details that each screen shows. Some screens take a bit of interpretation – the distorted form of a pylon in SideVision doesn’t really look anything like it does above the waterline. However, seeing where the boat ramp ends on the RealVision 3D screen stands out as clear as daylight.

Where the Element stands out, though, is its ability to accurately place the boat over underwater structure. Looking for the exact spot where the sand flats meet the channel? Not a problem. Drowned trees change from being little more than blurry blobs to pop out in surprisingly high definition.

I’ve had a long run of buyer’s regret when it comes to chartplotters and fishfinders. 

Nothing I’ve ever owned seemed to do both well, and I eventually became frustrated enough to buy a chartplotter for navigating, and a dedicated fishfinder fitted aft – who wants to keep looking forward to the bow when all the action is behind you? 

With the Raymarine Element, you do get the best of both worlds. The chartplotter performs just as smoothly at 30 knots as it does trawling at 5.0 knots, and the fishfinding functions work well together to provide an extraordinary amount of detail once you learn how to interpret what you’re looking at.

I’m disappointed the Wi-Fi connection is so limited. It also hurts that Navionics was swallowed up by Garmin, one of Raymarine’s competitors in the marine electronics space, so full compatibility between the Raymarine Element and the Navionics smartphone app is unlikely to ever happen.

But Raymarine is soon to launch LightHouse Charts in Australia, its version of Navionics, which should go some way to adding much more loungeroom-based smartphone integration. 

You also hope that Raymarine has sandbagged with the potential of the Element series, ready to react when competitors do by adding more software-based functionality similar to how it has over time with the Axiom series. It definitely seems to have the processing grunt to handle more.

Once that starts to happen, I’ll finally believe that the seagrass isn’t always greener on the other side.