The standard seating in the Four Winns has 2 position jump seats,so you can have a full sun pad at the back or 2 jump seats either side of the engine cover just by changing the position of the seats. I liked the idea because you get the best of both worlds with out compromising on cockpit space.
As for noise levels,how well the engine cover is insulated would be the determining factor IMHO
Ardy
South Australia

I think this really depends on the construction of the engine cover or sun pad. I do see some advantage to either configuration. I have the big sunpad and I like the storage on either side of the engine. When I winterize it I wind up moving the rear bench seat forward so I can get in and change the oil, filter, fuel filter and drain the water out of the motor. If I had the jump seats this might be easier. I do prefer my old school FW Horizon to the newer models because there is no molded in fiberglass around the rear of the engine, it makes it much easier to work on once the bench seat is out of the way.

I have a 2007 Four Winns Horizon 200 with the Sunsport seating package, and I really like it. It has a flip up walk through on the starboard side that elimates need for crawling over the sun pad. That flip up also makes a nice grap on for walking thru when the boat's rocking. The seat area has a removable cushion to save wear and tear when stepping down from the walk thru to the cockpit area. Dug around for some pics, but couldn't find any.

The sunsport seating is popular with passengers, perhaps too popular - sometimes I have to ask passengers to move to the bow to balance out the load, even available bow down trim control has not proved adequate at times. While I have not been out in an equivalent Horizon with standard seating, I can say that the Admiral has no complaints about engine noise. We do a fair amount of no wake 'cruising' and find the boat to be much quieter than an older 16' bowrider with a smaller engine and standard seating/ dog house arrangement (an '88 Maxum, so not really a fair comparison).