New Fishfinders

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wapiti

New member
I am looking to replace my old Lowrance LMS-350A with a new Fishfinder. I want a dual frequency unit with at least a 7" color screen. Need to be able to use this unit in fresh and salt water. 600 to 1000 watt output? I don' t need GPS as I already have a Garmin gps and an IPad ii with the Navionics app in the boat. Any thoughts or recommendations?
Thanks! Wapiti
 
I'm disappointed with the 200KHZ beam on the Airmar TM260. It's only a 6 degree cone angle. Doesn't really show much area under the boat.
 
Are there any other brands of Fishfinders with at least 600 watts of output other than Furuno that could be used for both marine and fresh water applications? The Furuno Fv 585 looks like a great unit but very pricey.
 
Lowrance makes several stand alone fish finders or even the fairly inexpensive Lowrance M68C S which is a small GPS/sonar unit. You can get one for around $400 with the transducer and it's 800W peak-to-peak. However, if you want a color screen bigger than 4-5" it's going to cost a good bit more.
 
Be careful about comparing peak to peak power versus true RMS (root mean square) power. I believe Lowrance is the only one industry wide that uses peak to peak. The rest use RMS. From Wikipedia: "Peak to peak always produces a higher value than the continuous ("RMS") figure, however, and so has been tempting to use in advertising".
 
Just wanted to clarify that Lowrance is really excellent equipment and user friendly. Given what I know now versus seven years ago, I would likely choose Lowrance today. I don't know how the Furuno stand alone sounders are, but you darn near need to be a rocket scientist to use the multi-function Furuno units. Only when you are comparing power claims of Lowrance to other manufactures, should you be wary of the amount of power that Lowrance claims to put out versus other comparable units.
 
I have found the Lowrance units to be better than either Garmin or Ray Marine. At times there have been some customer service problems, but these seem to be more in the past now.

As far as broad band, CHIRP and structure scan--Lowrance seems to be at the leading edge.

The Elite 5X at about $400 is a 500 watt RMS machine which will get down to 1000 feet and gives good resolution--easy to use.

Hummingbird also makes good depth sounders--it just depends on on deep you want to go for the price and power.
 
From my time in Alabama, the overwhelming choice of the bass boat crowd (and they are very serious about their sonar) is Lowrance...so far ahead that I couldn't even begin to guess what second place would be. If I ever get a stand alone it will be one of those. I love my Garmin plotters but for fishing their sonar sucks.

Rick
 
Went to the SI Tex website and see that they have a SVX 650 Fishfinder which looks like something that would work for me for less than $800. Has anyone else had any experience with these units? Where would one find a dealer that sells these units in Canada?
Thanks!
Wapiti
 
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