Garmin BlueChart® Mobile App Reviews

Ok the program is FREE, most all companys charge for the charts $o get over it. I have the Americas, its like $65? (this half of the world). Lot a data to load into an IPad mini with a GB of ram. Just load the east side or the west side of the Americas or that tini little part of the world that you need. Where ever. Duh. I even checked the lakes, they are fine, get a brain. The program is made by Garmin to supplement Garmin Chart Plotters, but I still use it alone a lot. My IPad Mini II with a SIM has a real GPS... You can even change the boats autopilot heading by just moving a waypoint on the route that you are following and hit send. Spend three minutes and figure it out, there again, if you have a brain!, to a Garmin Chartplotter and any network connected autopilot vintage 1998 or newer. Thats the oldest one I have used. Alas there is another new problem on the latest and greatest version (ova course). When I send a rout to my gpsmap4010 the name does not follow and I have to type it in. Have sailed 79,000 around the world on autopilot (single handed and sleeping most all the time) and hand steered a few hundred miles. Ok maybe a thousand or two? Enjoy

Addendum: Can you make our devices synch our content in the cloud? Im tired of planning routes at home and getting to the boat to do it all over again on that dedicated iPad. Original: Seems Garmin is content to just be a map. Easiest example: there is NO place on the app to contact Garmin to give feedback, report a bug. So here, in full public view, feedback: Why is it so hard to find Time, as in time encounter, time elapsed, time remaining? Going somewhere by boat involves estimating time... For our passengers, for our fuel, for keeping an appointment. Display some time parameters. (Look at a GNS 430 display for ideas.) Too many button pushes to bring up a chart. While underway, need to push Routes, push the tiny little menu button, and select view on screen. Hard to do in a boat that is underway. If Im looking at Routes, why not let a double tap bring it onscreen! Or, let a single tap on the small overview map bring it up. Or let the single tap bring up a large View a on Screen? prompt.

Beware! I got burned on my in app purchase. Family sharing does not work. I wanted a refund so I could repurchase the charts on our new iPad Pro purchased specifically to run this app. What a disappointment! Apple and Garmin were completely unhelpful in my request for a refund.

I like the interface but if you use the active captain feature and say anything bad about it, they will block your access.

Does not show up on my 741xs Its has charged me for two years please help

Garmin does a better job than everyone else. Interface is very intuitive, and with overlays you get a great picture of your route.

I cant see the speed of boat in My iPhone. How can i solve this problem? Thanks

Unfortunately, this App crash in the attempt to open it. It started to happen after the last Upgrade. Before the last upgrade I used it a lot and liked the App for planning the boat trip. I think that I lost all the planning done in this App.

Maps themselves seem ok but lacking basic functionality such as the ability to navigate to a set of co-ordinates.

Be ready to join their never never plan as any maps you buy will be outdated within a few months. But wait, you can always buy an update. Ya right!

This was a great app, especially with access to active captain data, before the latest version 1.3.1. For some reason they erased all the active captain data during the upgrade, and now the app will not allow me to connect through settings to reinstall that data. So, basic charts with no anchorage or marina details. Heard the same from others. No response from Garmin to my support request. Not good.

Slow, not very user friendly, weird display. I could go on but you get the point. Get Navionics. A lot more bang for your bucks.

Took it for a ride on the dingy (iPhone). The charts did not refresh properly on the display while moving on the lake. I was getting a dark display like if everything was a hazard zone. Hit the bottom !!!!

Decent charts but there is no ability to navigate to a point. Tracks are recorded and there is good Active Captain integration, but there is no way to back up user generated comment. Garmins position is that BCM is a planning app and any data a user wishes to make permanent must be up loaded to a Garmin Wireless device, otherwise an iPad swap will result in loss of content. Not allowing in app back up is a serious oversight in my opinion.

I also use Navionics and honestly Navionics gives you far more bang for your buck. On the good side, I really like the user interface. Its clean and easy to follow for the most part. I also like the ActiveCaptain integration - fantastic. In fact its the one reason I bought this app in the first place. Now for the bad: I would really like to be able to export my tracks and routes to some external app like Google maps or whatever using GPX or KML. Seems to me that this is a no-brainer but all they give you is a cheesy (inaccurate) image of your route or track that you can e-mail to yourself. It would also be nice to be able to enter waypoints with Lat/Lon directly instead of the cumbersome indirect method you are stuck with. This might not be such a drawback if you could import/export waypoints, routes and tracks to/from other applications... Not good enough. Not being able to exchange data with other apps is just basic simple stupid functionality and about the LEAST I would expect a navigation app to do.

I just paid for the maps and a month later they want almost $50 for an update. You got to be kidding. Garmin Garbage. Save your money and look else where.

So I just got notification from Garmin that a new update is available and I can download it for the same price I paid for the original. In other words they want me to re-purchase the charts every time they make any tiny little change to it. Imagine that! No other developer does this. What a shameful scam! They update charts several times a year and expect us to pay every time they do it, what a freakin joke! I wont fall for it a second time, they only got my money once, not again.

FYI - if you have to reinstall the app or upgrade your phone you lose all your map purchases. They will not restore and app tries to force you to purchase the new maps. I.e. lost all my 2013 maps (not cheep) with a phone upgrade, they wont restore, and only option is to purchase the 2014 maps. SHAME ON YOU GARMIN! Ill take my business elsewhere.

Search shuts down the program. Very basic for more money than I should have spent. Go elsewhere.

Too expensive for a planning tool that cant be used to navigate unless you transfer routes and waypoints to your chart plotter.