Sonar technology

[Alli-drenaline Rush]

Hey guys.... Any downsides to the Humminbird 998 relative to the Lowrance HDS-8 gen2?

Thanks,
Richard

 

[fenwayfear]

image quality, i have the HDS 10 and have seen several 998's and i would say that the lowrance is better but that is JMO. Structure scan for the hds units are the ticket, but i am have yet to see birds 360 imagining in person.

 

[Bobalouie]

One downside is that Humminbird doesnt have a virtual dash. The Lowrance units can interface with the Smartcraft gage and display a digital dash of just about everything that the smartcraft gage does. Its pretty cool. One downside of the lowrance units are that if you want structure scan, you have to get a module that interfaces with the transducer and then sends data to the display. So you have an extra peice of equipment that has to be mounted somewhere in the boat. Its how Lowrance got around Hummbird's patent for the technology. They dont process in the head unit.

 

[Alli-drenaline Rush]

Thanks guys! I have a Lowrance LCX-113c hd - the predecessor to the HDS-10. You guys bring up good points - the only thing that I don't like about Lowrance is the difficulty of waypoint management after the fishing trip. Say I'm cruising along and I see a stump. If I idle out of the lane to that stump, I want to be able to erase the idling later and only show the track in the lane and the stump danger point for the time that I run that area with the lake level up. Not always easy to do with Lowrance MapCreate software.

Digital dash does seem cool.

 

[dragmerc]

lowrance has better graphics and more quality problems. humminbird comes up with the ideas and lowrance copies and tries to fancy up the original idea. i hate knockoffs. when bird gets the 360 perfected if it's truly a radar style unit, everything else will be history. they have to change the way the transducer is deployed.

 

[Alli-drenaline Rush]

Closing out this thread and thanks again guys for the comments.

Lowrance gets the nod basis the superior human/machine interface, superior warranty offering and the availability of the digital dash functionality.

Richard

 

[Bobalouie]

Good choice Richard.

 

[90 5.0]

either choice is good, depending on personall preferences.

I have hds and a fishing buddy went from hds to birds when he got his new rig. He then added hds's back to the boat for mapping.

He left the birds on too though, he liked the bird si, and says it's on par and in some instances better than his hds's si on his old boat.

so to get the best of both worlds he uses the birds for si only and the hds's for 2d and mapping only.

he has a 998 and an 1198 and two hds5's on his boat...

crazy....

 

[Alli-drenaline Rush]

either choice is good, depending on personall preferences.

I have hds and a fishing buddy went from hds to birds when he got his new rig. He then added hds's back to the boat for mapping.

He left the birds on too though, he liked the bird si, and says it's on par and in some instances better than his hds's si on his old boat.

so to get the best of both worlds he uses the birds for si only and the hds's for 2d and mapping only.

he has a 998 and an 1198 and two hds5's on his boat...

crazy....

No information overload there lol, or is it called redundancy???? Bet he can map out a minnow fart lol.....