BD970 to BD990

[MarkSilver]

I have extensive experience. Our iG8 is BD970, the iG9 is BD990.

The question is complicated by which options are enabled on both and the firmware versions.

If the BD970 is fully enabled with V 5.48 or higher, and the BD990 is fully enabled (all tracking, all frequencies, all RTK options) AND the BD990 has the MAXPro option with the 6.10 firmware version (or higher, current = 6.13), then the BD990 will smoke (and I mean totally smoke) the BD970 under moderate and heavy canopy.

Without the MAXPro option the differences are substantially less. 

There is no measurable difference between them in the open, other than the BD990 actually fixes a bit slower than the BD970. (However, the BD990 will fix under heavy canopy with reliable results where the BD970 might never fix.)

The big tracking difference is BeiDou B3 on the BD990. BeiDou SV’s 1-13 are B1 B2 which the BD970 can fully utilize. SV 14 and higher have B1 B3. So the BD970 is single frequency when tracking those higher numbered SV’s. The BD970 still uses L1 on them for fine positioning, however they can not contribute as much to integer resolution. 

I have extensively tested multiple brands on my dump robot (I have specifically done more than 40,000 dumps just comparing the BD970 and BD990 over the past few years.) The BD990, fully enabled is better under canopy.

However, the BD970’s with recent firmware are really great receivers too. This is reflected both in the price of the OEM boards and in the price of receivers which use them.

I assume that performance under canopy is the metric you are most interested in?

[maritime64]

Thank you for the great reply!

Soon to be upgrading from a Topcon Hiper Ga, and its sounds like either the 970 or 990 will suit me fine.

It was difficult to determine any difference from the manufacture cut sheets alone.

Cheers,