I have a new Lowrance HDS-8 and I have to admit I'm a little disappointed in it. The sonar works great but it will take me awhile to get used to this one and the display. The GPS works but the software is a bit suspect. For example, if I switch from full screen GPS to GPS+sonar on a split screen, sometimes the software is confused and the map no longer displays with heading up - regardless of my attempts to re-set it multiple times. On more than one occasion this past weekend, it didn't load the maps from the Navionics chip (even after asking me if I wanted them loaded) and I had to re-boot to get the maps loaded. Also, even with the maps loaded (and this is probably a Navionics map issue and not a HDS-8 issue), in many places off the BC coast the depths were not even close to correct on the maps. The GPS was set to display in feet but I swear that in some locations the map depths were in meters (e.g. it would read 180 ft on the sonar but 60 ft on the map). I found this problem in the areas outside of Pender Harbor. I didn't have this problem everywhere, so I suspect that just one or more digital charts got converted incorrectly before being added to the Navionics chip. So I won't blame that on Lowrance but regardless the HDS software seems pretty buggy.
The UI on the Lowrance is better than on the Raymarine units but still not as easy as on a Garmin. If I were to do it over again, I'd get the Garmin. I may still add a Garmin GPS and then use the HDS8 only for sonar, radar and backup GPS. It's software is annoying enough (especially compared to my previous Garmin on my previous boat) that I'm not sure how long I'll go before I get annoyed enough to drop some more cash on a Garmin.
