Before your read this, I apologize for going overboard on electronics. Please don't hog-pile on me for my excesses ;^)))). I really do like screen flexibility.

A three of years ago, when we upgraded our 11 year-old boat, we left our Northstar 6100i 10" display at the helm in place when we upgraded the radar from an old Furuno system to a new one. (The older one was a 9" repeater for our 4KW B&W system. The old Furuno wouldn't display AIS targets and my bride said it was too small to really see in the rain at night. Though I like the Northstar, Northstar never did what the promised in providing AIS information on the 6100i. If they had, I'd probably just added a Northstar radar capability and given-up the Furuno (even though I didn't like their system that much and Furuno really is, in my opinion, has the best radar systems) .

We added the a Furuno 12" unit at the Helm in a Nav Pod which combines chartplotter, radar, and AIS at the helm. I would have resisted changing out the radar to a color unit, but Furuno's sytem is very nice.

We generally run it with Sirius weather as an overlay on Navionics charts. We have our routes programed redundantly on both cockpit units. That way, should one go down (or power consumption become a concern), we turn off one system.

On the Furuno 12" display, I usually run two windows when using the radar. When using just the chartplotter function, I vary that depending on circumstances.

With the radar, assuning not too much clutter I overlay the radar on the chart, but I like to have the radar screen without overlays of the chart. With the Furuno system you can decide to have AIS targets on any and all screens. I usually leave AIS target shown on both the radar and the chart screens.

Split screening options, depending on situations allows me to vary both the scale and north-up, as well as, course-up ortientations. Usually I prefer North-up -- but a lot of people prefer course-up.

The Furuno system allows you set-up a library of screen set-ups so you can easily return to one or more configurations.

In familar waters, I don't bother with this (nonsensical0 level of information and adjustmenst. In most situations, I just have the chartplotter running with AIS overlays at one scale. I zoom in- and out- as I feel is appropriate. However, in other conditions there are a lot advantages I've found to improving siutational awareness by using some the features that such a system allows.