LXNav V7 vs Butterfly vario?

So I have both a V7 that I used at Standard Class Nats last summer, and now also have a Butterfly vario. Sadly, the Butterfly unit didn't arrive until very late in the soaring season, so I've racked up far less experience with the unit. Previously, I used a Cambridge 302 / 303 combination. Here are some thoughts:

(1) Both the V7 and the Butterfly are fantastic units, and a significant upgrade in terms of overall usability compared to the 302/303 combination.

(2) The V7 is significantly easier to install. The Butterfly has a separate box that contains the inertial measurement system, and this has some tricky installation requirements—needs to be level in flight, aligned with the axis of flight, and isolated from sources of magnetic and electrical interference. I ended up installing mine behind my spars, and then routing the communication cable to the Butterfly display in my panel. This also required pulling pitot, static, and TE lines to the shelf behind my spar. Nothing was insanely difficult, but in the end this required a substantial re-wiring of my entire panel.

(3) The Butterfly display is gorgeous. It's easy to read in the brightest conditions.

(4) I use the Butterfly to display Flarm traffic from my Flarm brick. This in combination with sending Flarm traffic to my PDA avoids the need for a separate Flarm display in my opinion.

(5) As a vario and speed to fly computer, I think the V7 and Butterfly are equal right now. I believe that the Butterfly has the potential to become much better in time because it will have the advantage of the inertial measurements for gust filtering and so on. Although I have no special knowledge, my impression is that the Butterfly software is not fully being exploiting all of the data it is getting from the IMU.

(6) Both are very easy to configure to your preferences.

(7) Customer support seems to be a bit better from LXNav in my experience. I had a problem at Nats and received responses to my emails within hours that helped me solve my problems. The Butterfly folks have been responsive to my questions, but usually it takes a couple of days and often it has been an acknowledgment that, yes, I'm an early adopter and they will have to address my concern in a future firmware update.

(8) The Butterfly vario is insanely well built. Parts and finish are all are very high quality.

I'm personally supper happy with both, and look forward to getting more out of them this season. I don't think you would be unhappy with either choice.. It's really a question of how far out do you want to be out on the edge of vario technology—the Butterfly has more to offer in that area.

Chris
42DJ