North Australian FISH FINDER forums

I’ve always had lowrance sounders but it’s time to upgrade.

The majority of my fishing is trolling and casting for Barra.

I’ll be looking at spending up to 4k

Currently got analysis paralysis so looking at what people recommend

They're much of a muchness, Coop.

They're all pretty good at finding fish, structure etc.

I've currently got Humminbird but have had other brands. They were OK.

Tales of unreliability, problems, unsuitability for the job abound with all brands to the extent that you really have to look at after sales service more closely.

You can't "service" a sounder so that means talking to other users about satisfaction with the performance of local retailers when/if something goes wrong.

The bigger the screen the better.

Just found my first non-paper-roll sounder in the shed, it had LCD pixels like bricks, and from memory it didn't like deep water either. People are lucky these days, can even see the shape of individual fish. Not sure where sounder tech will advance too, maybe they'll put out a stimulus frequency that makes fish feed?

As for COOP's question, can't go wrong with Lowrance, been a great sponsor here too

Cheers fellas. Yeh they have certainly come a long way...

Do hummingbirds use more battery? I’ve also heard you can’t operate the drift alarm on standby mode for sleeping at sea

Start maybe also thinking of compatibility with your ideal future? pinpoint electric motor.

No plans for an electric any time soon. I mainly troll or tie off for a flick

Lowrance has always been very reliable
Heard of plenty of issues with humminbird
Image quality with the new Garmins looks amazing but the sheer number of models is very confusing

Coops

None of the recreational market sounders draw current that will knock yr battery around. You'll see that by the fuse sizes (2 or 3 amp).

Don't be influenced by the dramatic sounding kw (kilowatt or 1000 watt) term. That only refers to the pulse sent out for a very short time. But its only pulsed and the average is a lot less than that. Hence the small fuses.

A few pointers from a long time Lowrance user that recently shifted to Humminbird.
All points below relate to moving from a 10 year old Lowrance HDS Gen3 12 to the HB Helix 12
1/. Don't underestimate the familiarity of the interface - I think Lowrances 'cogwheel' interface is fantastic and after 12 months still coming to terms with HB's interface and where to find things - much more complicated IMO, and it's taken me much longer than I would have liked to become familiar with the HB interface.
2/. Number of characters to store waypoint names less on HB
3/. I took for granted the ability to 'scroll' backwards through sonar history - if I could do this on a 10 year old HDS, surely I could on the latest HB - not so. The only way to go back through recent sonar readings, is to constantly have the 'record' facility enabled. By this , I mean if for example you notice an object on the screen that is just about disappear off the screen to the left, you can't just hit left arrow and scroll back to the object.
4/. A big factor in my decision to swap was the supposed WOW factor of the 1,000+ (Mega) kHz side imaging. I gotta say I don't see a fantastically improved display from what I was getting on the 10 year old HDS sidescan.
5/. Refresh rate on the GPS is appalling - not sure if this is lack of processing power? - but the chartplot track on the HDS was nearly instantaneous - the HB appears to be 2 or 3 second delayed, which is particularly noticeable (and annoying) if you're zoomed right into a waypoint and traveling slowly.
6/. I find it much more clunky to move data to & fro the unit, and loading upgrades are much more finicky.
7/. I think HB have a bit of 'Apple' about them, in that it seems you need propriety tools to do stuff that seemed more open source/3rd party compliant on the Lowrance.

Hope this helps.

Great advice slug

I've been Lowrance user of numerous models fover the years
I changed to garmin (for no reason) and I've had 3 since the change.
I now have a 8412 garmin with 56 tranny
and its great.
Easy to learn the features
Can record directly to your ph instead of having to record then download from the unit
Can control from your ph
Garmin support are very good and will have a solution during the ph call. (unlike Lowrance who should change their section as ‘non support’
If there is an issue, they update software asap

Thanks for all the detailed replies. Some good points to think about.

I’m thinking HB is out as people keep saying how hard they are to work out.

Garmin or Simrad are looking good to me at this stage.

I've been using Humminbird for years, never had an issue with usage. I find them easy to navigate, however I need to upgrade soon and will probably go the the Simrad Evo 3s.

Naming waypoints with the Bird is an absolute PITA. You'd think after all their recent revisions they would have sorted this out. This is sorted on the Solix, as its touch, but I normally just download them to the PC and use the Garmin Homeport software to clean them up.

I'd stick with a top of the waz Lowrance. Same operating system that you are used to, seems like they are getting pretty flash with "Live" and "active imaging". It should go without saying nothing less than HDS. A 9 inch should be around your price range.

I have run lowrance in the past carbon 15s and 12s- the GPS was outstanding and they were fast and very very easy to use. I felt let down by the side imaging which is really what I wanted them for.

I now run 3x Solix 15s, and 2x Garmin 9s and I will never go back after the birds
The imaging on the bird is outstanding, the 360 is game changing. However like others have said the GPS is pretty average, so I run the Garmins for GPS and my motor gauges.

Be carful with the Birds the Solix units draw a truck load of power on full brightness which you will need in the sun, always have a backup battery.