7" gps / sounder

[Evenweight]

Looking for a good machine for my folks. There are allot of products out there. Whats the best bang for the buck?

Garmin
Lowrance
Raymarine
all good products but prices can add up fast when you need to buy a card and a black box and and and.

thoughts anyone.

Richard

 

[N2013]

Looking for a good machine for my folks. There are allot of products out there. Whats the best bang for the buck?

Garmin
Lowrance
Raymarine
all good products but prices can add up fast when you need to buy a card and a black box and and and.

thoughts anyone.

Richard

I picked up a Humminbird Helix 7 a few months ago. Easy to use, fast to load and nice features. I'm sure there are more features available with other machines but it's straight forward, does what I need. $669 includes the map card. Guys at Trotac helped with the set up.

 

[Evenweight]

nice thanks very much

 

[finaddict]

Contact Harbour Chandler in Nanaimo and ask if they have any Lowrance returns for upgrades. With all the new products coming out and the addiction some guys have to new products, there are lots of trade-ins going for cheap. Ask for Denise, they will normally pay for the freight to Vancouver. (and no I have no affiliation with HC, they are just good people to deal with)

 

[ericl]

Is this for fresh or salt water? The guy I bought my Garmin from sells everything but thinks Hummingbird & Lowrance are not as good for saltwater. (google semperfi electronics).

My motto is you wanna play you gotta play. Garmin optional charts have "fishing maps" with 1 foot contours - shows structure like nothing else.

Whatever you get, get a CHIRP system.

As for the black boxes, as of current models, these add additional features beyond basic down-pointing sonar. Down-Vue, side-vue forward scanning, etc. They try to compose a 3-D image of the bottom. Most likely marginal importance for most NW fishing; especially Salmon. I am confident CHIRP will show bait/target fish so that you know if you should move to another location based on the "empty screen".

 

[advTHXance]

My buddy recently ordered a Lowrance Elite-7 CHIRP with navionics gold card, transducer, installation hardware, etc. basically everything you need for an install. Not sure where he ordered from, think it was somewhere in WA state, but the total price was about $800 including tax and shipping. The unit arrived within a couple of days and it took me maybe a couple hours to install everything.

I can find out where he ordered from if need be.

 

[Evenweight]

thank you very much for the replies guys. My Dad went with a Lowrance hds 7 gen 3. Im looking forward to seeing it in action up at nootka in a couple of weeks.

Bring on the CHIRP