Anyone have any opinions or knowledge on the difference between the two different lines? What is you thoughts on the name brand reputation between the 2?

The units are the same except the bezels. They are both made by Merc.

I have Smart craft on my boat and will never go any other way. The info given is just too valuable with smart craft. You can hook some analog Lavorsi gauges up to smart craft system.
read here more about that http://www.livorsi.com/catalog/smartcraft.htm

I have the Merc smart craft gauges and digital read outs. Not one problem and everything works great and I know everything from my trip odometer, fuel used in gallons, MPG instant and average, fuel till empty, air temp, COG, GPS speeds, fault codes, digital temps and so forth.

keep the dash simple and use the raceview or systemview panels. we have 2 in ours one for each side of the boat. you have evrything you will ever need in one lcd screen and then some

The perception is the Lavorsi gauges are better and the general public that doesn't know will think this way especially during resale. The Lavorsi analog smart craft gauges do look better since you can get the carbon faces, painted faces and so forth. The Merc gauges look more plain however the guts seem to be the same and the smartcraft system is the same.

I would go with just the big system view panel and keep it clean, modern and simple. Plus the system view will show much more info too.

I was told by a very reputable (high performance) boat builder that the Smartcraft gauges - as in the analog / analog & digital ones, not the SC5000 unit - were made by VDO, and thus were very high quality. Not to take away from anyone, but if Livorsi OEMs them from Merc, and Merc has them built by VDO, then...