Are John Deere Guidance systems worth the premium?

[Cow1]

I have been operating one of the earlier John Deere light bars and domes for probably over 10 years, which has been adequate for my needs of spraying, top dressing and setting up land work for parallel work.

My dome stopped working and my local John Deere supplied me their spare one to use. I’ve found my dome can’t be repaired so am looking at the next step.

I could just get a new dome but have a sneaky suspicion that it will come in at more than a basic screen based GPS and I would be still using a light bar. Alternatively I could upgrade to a John Deere screen with the dome but they seem pricey compared with Teejet, Trimble etc basic guidance. I run 2 tractors and am thinking I could buy basic guidance systems for both tractors for the price of upgrading one John Deere one.

So as the title says are John Deere worth the premium? I haven’t got in depth knowledge of guidance so any advice/help would be much appreciated.

 

[Briantee]

The big brands, JD, Trimble, Outback, Agleader, etc are all roughly the same ripoff. But at least they function well.

 

[Phil P]

It depends what your end goal is?
If you just want a line on a screen to drive to then there’s plenty of cheap systems on the market and you’d be buying a lot of features on a jd system that you’ll never use.

However, If your thinking of in the future going full autotrac, field documentation, isobus, variable rate, yield mapping and more, you need to be looking at one of the premium systems. If non of those are on your list, save your money

I actually have a complete jd lightbar system I haven’t used for a number of years that I’d sell pm me if your interested.

 

[nick...]

Probably a cartel amongst them to keep the prices up.systems have been about long enough for prices to fall dramatically I’d have thought
Nick...

 

[mo!]

Probably a cartel amongst them to keep the prices up.systems have been about long enough for prices to fall dramatically I’d have thought
Nick...

They are priced at what the market will stand, not what they cost.

Sadly I can't stand the price.

 

[cb387]

We had exactly this question a few years back when buying a new tractor for row crop work and needing rtk. Would have been a lot cheaper to buy MF / NH with someone else’s GPS on it. In the end we went with JD as they were the only company who would guarantee it would work at the slow planting speeds we sometimes work at (1 km/h). Others may also guarantee this now. Was also concerned that if we had an issue we would be stuck between the tractor supplier and the gps supplier, each saying problem was with the others but of kit.

Since then have never regretted paying the extra for JD. If something doesn’t work it’s one phone all to fix it. Local JD dealer backup is excellent. (Screen was stolen a few weeks back but that’s another story)