Sonar/chartplotter recommendations?

[AKRISONER]

 

Just one unit. How useful is the SI? Ive seen it online but cant determine its usefulness for me.

 

These are the three im thinking about:

 

http://www.basspro.com/Lowrance-Hook7-Fishfinder/Chartplotter/product/2258405/

 

http://www.basspro.com/Garmin-Striker-7-SV-Fishfinder/product/1509231248/

 

http://www.basspro.com/Humminbird-HELIX-7-DI-GPS-Fishfinder-and-Chartplotter/product/1506251145/

 

side imagining is cool...but lets get serious, i rarely if ever use it. I will admit yes, i have seen structure like a sunken tree on it before...but most of my fish that i actually see on the sonar are suspended and obvious, otherwise the sonar simply gets used to show me structure, ala...humps or bait.

 

ALSO

 

sterling...are you saying that the t box has the ability to plot on navionics utilizing the depthmaps developed using your tbox...can you please explain? this has me pumped...cause as you have it, the majority of my fishing spots arent charted or are incredibly inaccurate.

Edited September 20, 2016 by AKRISONER

[Sterling]

 

sterling...are you saying that the t box has the ability to plot on navionics utilizing the depthmaps developed using your tbox...can you please explain? this has me pumped...cause as you have it, the majority of my fishing spots arent charted or are incredibly inaccurate.

 

Yes this feature was a big selling point for me. Plus I already had a tablet so the all-in cost was about $300 (I got all sorts of bells and whistles).

 

Let's say you have the tablet with navionics installed and you hit a back lake that isn't charted. You can generate bathymetric maps on the spot by zooming around a few times.

 

I've used this many times to re-define structures that aren't shown on existing navionics maps too.

 

You can toggle this livechart feature if you don't want to see the modified/new contours.

 

Long answer short, yes this feature would make bathymetric maps on the spot and/or fix your inaccurate maps.

 

 

I can see battery power being an issue with a tablet. I bring my ipad sometimes for a second GPS screen but am constantly putting it to sleep and restarting it to save the batt. Can't keep it running all day.

 

Yes this is the first problem I noticed with mine. I solved it by de-activating all non-essential features. Only GPS and wifi were left on. I have a USB jack now that charges the battery faster than it's consumed.

 

Another problem is heat. If you have a black unit, it absorbs a lot of heat on sunny days which can affect performance and/or disable charging (since the battery heats up too much as it charges).