Read this article first : Technical point
Koden, an unknown marine electronic manufacturer in pleasure boat world, big big mistake.
Koden makes heavy duty professional marine electronic equipment. It’s a Japanese manufacturer, designed and made in Japan. It’s by far my favorite brand of marine electronic equipment and I will tell you why.
I have installed and serviced Koden for 10 years. Actually I should say I installed Koden for 10 years and occasionally serviced Koden because with Koden, and that is why its my favorite manufacturer, it’s working for decades without any problem. When I was receiving a faulty Koden, first it was terribly old, tube display sounder or radar, and the common fault was easy to fix : The heavy weight electronic components needed in a tube display had broken the soldering after decades of duty in a boat jumping in the heavy sea of Iceland… And even if the instrument was really old, customer still want to pay to fix it because they wanted nothing else. That’s because Koden is not only fantastically reliable but is doing perfectly the job. With Koden, when you buy a radar, you get a radar, nothing else. But a really good radar that will work for decades. Same with sounder and GPS. And that’s also what I like with Koden, one of few manufacturers still doing instruments like that, one instrument, one function, extremely reliable. All the equipment made by Koden are waterproof, fully waterproof. Front, back, side. It can be immersed into water and still work. It makes sense in a boat. It will protect the electronic from the salty moisture that is in a boat. Unfortunately not so true with competitors, so much « marine » equipment are not waterproof actually.
I have a story, real story. In Iceland, one customer capsized with his fishing engine boat in an heavy sea. It broke all the windows, but the boat came back up side up, full of water of course. The boat was finally pulled on land and the man rescued. I was mandated by the insurance to evaluate the damage on the electronic equipment. Everything was faulty of course, except ALL koden equipment. By memory, the GPS, the sounder and the sonar. I don’t remember if it was a radar or not. But they were working. NOTHING else.
The last good news with Koden is that even if it’s professional equipment, they are manufacturing equipment for small and medium boats as well. So we can use them on pleasure boats. I could talk about other professional manufacturers that I am fully satisfy with, but it is waste of time because we can’t use them. It’s too big, to heavy for our pleasure boats and too expensive. Not with Koden.
So in my boat, I have a GPS, guess what, it’s a Koden. It’s the antenna GPS 20A. It’s just an antenna. You power it 12 or 24v, and it sends back NMEA with your GPS data. It takes so little energy that it always on, there is even not a switch to turn it off, always working, never a bug.
I have a radar, Koden 4kw. I will make an entire article on radar because there is a lot to say about it. But it’s perfectly working and really good performance.
I have an old GPS compass Koden. KGC-1. I will also make an entire article on GPS compass because there is a lot to say. But even though this instrument is more than 20 years, it’s perfectly working. New models have much better performance than this old GPS compass, one day I will change it, by the new model of Koden.
I don’t have a Koden sounder because I am not fishing so I don’t need a real sounder. I just need to know the depth. If not I will take the CVS-128 or its little brother CVS-126. I sold a lot of CVS-128, a lot, to professional fisherman, I don’t recall to have gotten one back, and customers happy about the performance.
Unfortunatly, Koden is not manufacturing autopilots. I have mentioned it to them many times, but it’s not in their priority unfortunately.
You have understood, I really like Koden. I don’t have any action of Koden on stock market, I am not paid by them, just I think when a good job is done, it should be said. If you want an reliable equipment for your boat, you should at least take a look at Koden. Nothing fancy, nothing extraordinary, just an instrument that is doing the job and for a long long time, trouble free.