Raymarine E70148 i50 Echo Sounder Review: a simple depth gauge that just does its job

I’ve been using the Raymarine E70148 i50 Echo Sounder on a small motor boat for a few outings now, and I’ll be blunt: this is not a flashy gadget, it’s a basic depth instrument that focuses on doing one thing properly. If you’re expecting fancy charts and colour sonar views like on a fishfinder, that’s not what this is. It’s a classic depth display meant to sit near your helm and give you a clear number so you don’t hit the bottom.

In my case, I wanted something that would talk nicely to existing Raymarine gear and not require me to rewire half the boat. The i50 sits in that sweet spot: it’s made to complement their C and E series multifunction displays, but it also works fine on its own as a standalone depth gauge. After a couple of weekends using it in shallow coastal waters, I mainly judged it on three things: how readable it is, how fast it reacts to depth changes, and whether it’s a pain to install.

Overall, it feels like a product designed for people who just want reliable information instead of twenty menus. The interface is very simple, maybe even a bit dated if you’re used to modern touchscreens, but there’s also something reassuring about having dedicated buttons and a clear numeric readout. On the water, when you’re bouncing around, you don’t really want to be stabbing at tiny icons anyway.

So if I had to sum up my first impression: it’s a straightforward, no-nonsense depth instrument. Not exciting, not full of hidden tricks, but it does the core job you buy it for. The rest of this review goes into how it’s built, how it performs on the water, and whether I think it’s worth the money compared to other basic echo sounders.

On the value side, the Raymarine i50 Echo Sounder sits in the middle: not bargain-basement cheap, not top-of-the-line expensive. You’re paying for a known marine brand, decent build quality, and integration with Raymarine networks. If you already have Raymarine C or E series displays or other SeaTalk instruments, it makes sense: everything talks together cleanly and your helm looks consistent. In that context, the price feels reasonable, especially considering the included "breakthrough" transducer and the 2-year warranty.

If you compare it to very basic depth gauges from lesser-known brands, those can be cheaper, sometimes quite a bit. But in my experience, that usually means more fiddly installation, less reliable readings, and customer support that you basically don’t have. So you have to decide what matters more: saving some money up front, or having a unit that is more likely to work reliably and that can be serviced or replaced by a big brand if something goes wrong. For a boat that’s worth a decent amount of money, I personally lean toward spending a bit more for something like this.

On the other hand, if you’re already considering a full multifunction display with built-in sonar and charts, then a standalone i50 might feel redundant. A modern plotter-fishfinder combo can show depth, bottom contours, and a lot more. In that case, the i50 only really makes sense as a secondary, always-on depth readout, so you don’t have to keep your main screen on the depth page. Some skippers like that redundancy; others will see it as an extra expense.

Overall, I’d rate the value as pretty good if you want a simple, reliable depth instrument and especially if you’re in the Raymarine ecosystem already. If you’re equipping a very basic boat on a tight budget, there are cheaper options that will also tell you how deep it is, but you’ll probably sacrifice some build quality and support. For what it offers – stable depth readings, solid construction, and easy integration – the price is fair, just not a bargain.

Visually, the Raymarine i50 is pretty plain: a black square instrument with a digital display and a few buttons. If you already have Raymarine gear on your helm, it matches their style and doesn’t look out of place. If you’re coming from older round analog gauges, it will look more modern, but compared to current glass-bridge style screens, it’s clearly from a more practical generation. Personally, I like that. On a small, slightly bouncy boat, I prefer big digits and physical buttons over glossy touchscreens.

The screen is the main point: the digits are large enough to read at a glance, and the contrast is good. In bright daylight it stayed readable without me having to shade it with my hand. At dusk, the backlighting is strong enough without being blinding. You can tweak the brightness, but I mostly left it at a middle setting and had no issue. There’s no colour graphics or fancy animations here, just numbers and a few indicators, which is exactly what you want from a depth gauge.

Button layout is simple: you get dedicated buttons for basic functions like changing display modes, setting alarms, and navigating settings. They have a decent click and are spaced far enough apart that you can hit them even with wet fingers. They’re not rubberized as much as some other marine instruments I’ve used, so they feel a bit more "plastic", but they responded reliably. The unit is rated for marine use, and during my tests it handled spray and some light rain without any hiccups.

Overall, I’d call the design practical and slightly conservative. If you want your helm to look high-tech, this won’t impress anyone. But if your priority is clear information and easy operation, the design choices make sense. My only real complaint is that the bezels and casing are a bit bulkier than necessary, so on a very tight console you’ll need to plan your layout. For most small boats, though, it fits in just fine and doesn’t get in the way.

The spec sheet mentions a polycarbonate outer shell and foam on the inside, and that’s pretty much how it feels in hand. The casing is standard marine-grade plastic: not fancy, not cheap toy-level either. When you tap it, you get that dense plastic sound that suggests it can take some bumps. I wouldn’t go smashing it with a winch handle, but on the boat it handled the usual knocks when I was installing it and tightening the screws.

The front panel and buttons are also plastic, with a finish that’s closer to "tool" than "consumer gadget". No soft-touch coating, no brushed metal, just plain black. The good side of that is it doesn’t show fingerprints much and it’s easy to wipe salt and grime off with a damp cloth. After a few outings, I didn’t see any discoloration or weird marks, even after some dried salt spray that I didn’t clean immediately.

The transducer itself feels more critical than the display, since that’s the part that will live in or through the hull. It has the usual sturdy plastic body you’d expect from a thru-hull or transom-mount sensor in this price range. Nothing special to report there: it doesn’t feel fragile, the cable strain relief looks decent, and the cable insulation feels thick enough to handle being routed through the boat without nicking easily. I still recommend protecting it with conduit or at least avoiding sharp edges, but that’s true for any sensor cable.

In terms of perceived quality, I’d say it’s pretty solid for a mid-range marine instrument. It doesn’t give that premium metal-and-glass impression, but it also doesn’t feel like it will fall apart after one season. The 2-year warranty from Raymarine backs that up a bit; they clearly expect it to survive normal use. For the price point and the target use (small boats, RIBs, modest yachts), the materials match what I’d expect: durable plastic that’s easy to live with rather than showpiece materials.

I haven’t owned this unit for years, so I can’t pretend I know exactly how it will age over a decade, but based on a few weeks of use and a bit of rough handling during installation, it gives a decent impression. The casing didn’t flex or creak when I tightened the mounting screws, and the front panel feels well sealed. I had it exposed to spray, a couple of short rain showers, and a lot of sun, and so far there’s no sign of fogging inside the display or water ingress.

The buttons are usually the first thing to feel tired on this kind of gear, but after repeated poking around through settings, they still have a firm click. There’s no wobble or misalignment. I did notice that if you press them with very wet, salty fingers, they can get a bit slippery, but that’s more a comfort point than a durability issue. The screen surface hasn’t scratched yet, even though I wiped it lazily with whatever cloth was around, including a not-so-clean rag once. Still, I’d avoid abusing it with sand or hard brushes.

The sensor and cable routing are always the real weak spots on boats. I made a point of checking the cable after a few trips, and there were no nicks or kinks. The strain relief at the transducer end looks solid, and the connector held tight. If you install it properly and don’t leave the cable rubbing against sharp edges or moving parts, I don’t see any obvious reason it would fail prematurely. The 2-year warranty is fairly standard in this segment; it’s not super generous, but it’s not stingy either.

From a practical point of view, it feels like a unit built to survive normal recreational use: weekend trips, seasonal boating, maybe even charter use if people don’t abuse it. If you run a commercial vessel or you’re out in rough seas all the time, you might want to step up to heavier-duty gear. But for a small motor boat, yacht, or RIB that sees regular but not extreme use, I’d be reasonably confident this will last several seasons if installed properly and not kicked every time you climb aboard.

Performance-wise, I focused on two things: how quickly the Raymarine i50 updates the depth, and how stable the readings are when the water gets choppy or shallow. In practice, it behaved the way a decent echo sounder should. On my test trips in coastal water with depths ranging from 1.5 m to about 25 m, the unit tracked changes smoothly. When I approached a shallow sandbank, I could see the numbers steadily decreasing, not jumping around randomly, which is what you want when you’re trying to avoid touching bottom.

There is a slight delay, as with all small-boat depth sounders, but nothing that bothered me. If you’re moving at normal cruising speed for a small motor boat, the update rate is fast enough that you have time to react. I didn’t notice any weird spikes or dropouts, except once when I crossed over a patch of heavy weed, where the reading briefly froze and then picked up again. That’s fairly typical behaviour – I’ve seen the same with other brands – so I wouldn’t call it a flaw specific to this unit.

Alarms and extra functions are basic but useful. You can set a shallow-water alarm, which I did at 2 m for one trip. It triggered as expected when I came into a shallow channel. The beeper is loud enough to hear over engine noise at moderate RPM, though at full throttle I could see it being easy to miss if you’re not paying attention. The display also shows the alarm clearly, so you get both audio and visual cues. I didn’t really use any other display modes much; for me, depth in big digits was the main thing, and that part works well.

Overall, the performance is reliable and predictable. It’s not doing advanced sonar imaging or fish detection; it’s just giving you depth, and it does that cleanly. Compared to cheaper no-name depth gauges I’ve seen, the stability of the reading is better and the integration with other Raymarine equipment is a plus. Compared to higher-end sounders with big colour screens, it’s obviously more limited, but if you just want to know how much water is under your hull, this gets the job done without drama.

When you open the box of the Raymarine E70148 i50 Echo Sounder, there’s no surprise: you get the i50 display unit, the transducer (their "breakthrough sensor" as they call it), and the usual mounting hardware and documentation. It’s clearly packaged as a single-instrument kit, not a full navigation system. The product sheet talks about SeaTalk instruments and digital displays, and that’s exactly what it is: a simple digital depth readout that can tie into a Raymarine network if you already have one.

The display itself is standard size for a dash instrument, meant to fit where you’d normally put a gauge. It’s not huge – think along the lines of a typical 4-inch class instrument, not a big plotter screen. The transducer is the key part: this is what actually sends and receives the sonar ping to measure depth. In my setup, it behaved like any other small-boat depth sensor I’ve used: you mount it properly, make sure it has clean water flow, and then mostly forget about it. There’s nothing fancy to adjust every day.

The documentation is decent enough, though a bit dry. It explains how to connect it via SeaTalk and how to set alarms, units and offsets. If you’ve installed marine electronics before, you’re not going to learn anything new here. If you’re a total beginner, you’ll need to take your time, but it’s still manageable with a free afternoon and some patience. I didn’t feel lost, but I did have to double-check a couple of diagrams to be sure I wasn’t mixing up power and data lines.

In short, the package is very straightforward: one instrument, one sensor, some cables, and that’s it. No fancy extras, no random accessories you’ll never use. It feels like a tool, not a gadget bundle. If you’re expecting a plug-and-play unit with pre-crimped connectors for every possible setup, you might be a bit disappointed, but for a typical small motor boat or yacht, what’s in the box is enough to get you going.