Most reliable outboards
 

I know that back in the day yamaha had a reputation for reliability and mercury had a reputation for weak lower units. How do outboard makers fair today is 2023. I see a lot of boats with mercury on them so they can’t be that bad. What is the best outboard manufacturer in terms of reliability and maintenance? Some people still don’t trust mercs. Others thinks its a stif competition between yamaha and suzuki. Me personally, I think yamaha got to relax and was caught up to.

Depends what you want to do with your outboard.
I think Merc are generally better for high end performance but Yamaha are hard to beat as a commercial engine.

I know it’s a different market here in Thailand but Yamaha still sell a 2 stroke 200hp, NO fuel injection and NO oil injection. (Bit like an old 1980 model) They run them at 5,000 rpm all day on commercial speed boats and clock 3,000 plus hours before they start to fall apart. Plenty of four strokes here doing the same job but the 2 strokes are half the price to buy, and that’s a huge deal in this market.

Merc don’t even come close in sales, mostly due to price, and no cheap 2 stroke answer to Yamaha.

RR

I need something endurance. Like 24 to 36 hours straight

The difference is much smaller than in the carburated 2-stroke days when Yamaha was the durability leader by far (yes, they had corrosion issues in Florida).

Yamaha may still be the king of the hill, but all remaining manufacturers make reliable outboards. And Yamahas still corrode in Florida.

If you care about weight, Mercury is the way to go.

Maybe the Suzuki dealer gives you a better deal.

It is like cars these days.

Any engine can do that.

the onx diesel outboards you might want to look at pretty impressive

In boston yamaha outboards always corroded sooner than anything. Suzuki weighed a ton..

Only new 4 stroke id avoid is the Yamaha 350. Maybe the Suzuki 350 as well. Yamaha 425 is too loud. Everything else is fine. Mercs probably run a little faster.

suzuki diesel in my opinion. Don’t expect to go fast but my experience is they’ll last you 10yrs or more.

Suzuki makes diesel?

they make diesel anchors

I do a lot of offshore fishing in Costa Rica. All I ever see are suzuki diesels at harbor I use in Flamingo, CR.

Mercury dominates because of the sheer number and market share they have on the industry. That says a lot about the brand.

You would expect that the high hour applications like tow service, law enforcement, CG, water sports, ferry's would bubble up a common brand, but even that is a mixed bag. Around here the water patrol guys seem to repower every couple of years and it is always something different on the transom. My local harbormaster went from Evinrude to Honda, to Merc in the last 5 years.

I think in today's day and age, most manufacturers have figured out how to be "reliable" under most conditions.

With that said, buy Merc.

I did all kinds of research before I bought my small outboard around 15 years ago. I came up with; if you want to go fast, get a mercury. If you want to get home, get a yamaha.

Well I bought a yamaha, and it rotted out from the inside, after using salt away on it after every use. Unit had low hours on it.

I bought a mercury 3 years ago to replace it.

The Verado 350 is a really reliable engine in my experience. We had 2 put on our fire/rescue boat and not one hiccup. I will say the first iteration of the joystick wasn’t the best and thankfully we didn’t have anything like that on the boat but I have had a binnacle go out on me on a whaler that had the joystick and verado setup. The weight over the 300 is the addition of an inner cooler and I think that’s what really lends itself to the reliability of the 350. I think we had over 2 thousand hours on the clock when I retired and she is still going.