Anyone run a tablet on their boat for mapping?

The tablet overheating in the summer.

Guess you have to try it. That was just the first thing I thought of as my phone has done it several times. Also, what about cell service in the areas you fish? To me, the mapping card was well worth the cost. I have one card and can share between both units via ethernet. I have the Navionics which I like in lakes because it shows contour lines. I like my LA1 card for the mapping.

BTW,you only need 1 card these days if you are in Louisiana. Either the Navionics South, LA1 Card or the Unleashed card.

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Guess you have to try it. That was just the first thing I thought of as my phone has done it several times. Also, what about cell service in the areas you fish? To me, the mapping card was well worth the cost. I have one card and can share between both units via ethernet. I have the Navionics which I like in lakes because it shows contour lines. I like my LA1 card for the mapping.

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No need for cell service if there is an internal GPS receiver. You just have to have the maps downloaded beforehand. I also have a USB charge slot so no worries about running out of juice.

I fish all over and from what I can tell it would require 3 different map cards to get the coverage for the different states I fish for lakes and inshore. The app has is all for 10 bucks.

Ran a samsung tab as a chartplotter on my skiff. Used it for years. It was fantastic. You will need to toss a towel or something over it during the summer when you're not moving but other than that I had no issues. I kept high res satellite images on a memory card to run as an overlay on the navioncis application.

Obviously direct sunlight makes it's difficult to see, but even my HDS7 is hard to see in direct sunlight so it's just something you will have to live with. You do not need a 4g data package to use it as a charplotter, the GPS functions perfect without a data connection. You will not be able to load google earth overlays without a data connection so if you want to use satellite images you will need to cache them or store them on an SD card.

Battery life isn't that great so you will need to work out an external charging if you going to be making long runs. I used a goal zero charging pack because it's what I already had laying around. You will also need to carry a back up hand held GPS because going out with only one plotter is dumb. I've done several multi day trips in the back country of the everglades with this set up.

Pros
- Light weight, portable, endless mounting options
- multi function. Plan, scout, and plot routes all on a single unit
- doubles are media storage/playback if you have a bluetooth speaker system
- no wiring required.

Cons
- needs some type of weather protection
- requires some way to charge the unit on the water. Lots of charging packs out there for pretty cheap so it's hard to even put this on the con list
- direct sunlight viewing can be difficult.
- By the time you buy a tab, a case, and battery back up you're creeping up on the cost of a dedicated marine plotter.

My setup was almost exactly like this except without the sounder on the starboard side. Everything else was the same. I loved the setup and even with a new HDS I still miss the simplicity. It was nice to be able to drop waypoints without having to drag my HDS inside or move cards back and fourth from my computer to the plotter.

Do a little research. There are some new tablets out now that have screens designed to function in direct sunlight.