P70 vs P70s

[Gary Brockman]

I need to replace my Wheel Pilot and have found that there are two packages available, one with the p70 control head and the other with the p70s control head. What is the difference between the two control heads other than the cosmetic difference?

[Chuck - Raymarine - Moderator]

Welcome to the Raymarine Forum Gary,

The p70S has replaced the p70 within Raymarine's Evolution autopilot control heads to provide a hardware appearance which is consistent with the hardware appearance of Raymarine's latest generation of MFD. The p70 and p70S autopilot control heads utilize the same software and support the same set of features.

[Dan_Y]

Gary - in addition to what Chuck said I was puzzled by the difference too because some EV-100 auto pilot packages are priced a little more with the p70s versus the p70. The main differences I found between the two looking through the specs on the Raymarine site are:

The p70s has a max luminance (brightness) of 1100 nits (1 nit = 1 cd/m2) versus 700 for the p70. Better visibility with bimini down on a sunny day!

Keying off of one of Chuck’s recent and insightful posts about going for full NEMA 2K cert on new products, and if I read the specs correctly, the p70 has two STng and one ST1 ports on the back in contrast to the newer p70s, which appears to have a single STng and a ST1. The single STng port on the NEMA 2K cert'ed p70s prevents daisy chaining of NEMA 2K instruments, i.e. only one instrument per spur per Chuck's post.
Dan

[Chuck - Raymarine - Moderator]

Noted.