LOOKING SHARP

摘要

The awards were anything but small, and they came back-to-back-to-back-to-back. First, at ICAST, the world's largest sport-fishing trade show, Garmin's Panoptix LiveScope took home the Best Electronics Award. Then the sonar system won the Best in Show Award, with Bassmaster Elite Series and Garmin pro Fred Roumbanis announcing, "Never before have you been able to tell what species of fish you are looking at like this." And the fishermen weren't the only ones impressed with what they could see on the screen. Electronics experts couldn't geek out fast enough once they saw it. Panoptix LiveScope also took home the NMEA Technology Award from the National Marine Electronics Association - and earned Garmin itself a nod as no less than Manufacturer of the Year. "LiveScope is the first and only live, real-time recreational scanning sonar," the NMEAjudges wrote. Anyone reading the announcement could feel their enthusiasm leaping off the page as they described the technology. Panoptix itself is not new. Garmin debuted that technology in 2015, providing real-time, live sonar returns - something no other company had been able to do for recreational boaters. The Panoptix technology allowed forviews forward, aft, sideways and down, even while the boaf's hull was not moving. Garmin called the sonar "all-seeing," which sounded good until now, with the company proving that it can show boaters so much more, What the new Panoptix LiveScope ($1,499) does is combine that "all-seeing" sonar ability with live-return capability. The effect is that skippers can see real-time scanning-sonar images from beneath or away from the boat - as far as 200 feet away. And it doesn't matter if the boat is stationary or underway.