New Depth Finder

I’ve been looking into getting a new depth finder, and I was looking for some input. I’ve never owned one better than a base model so my experience with a better one is limited to what my research has turned up. The front runner right now for me is the Lowrance Elite-7 HDI unit. It seems like the best bang for the buck in my price range. In my research and from talking to others, it sounds like Lakemaster chips are the best for up on the Rainy River and Lake of the Woods, but are no longer available for Lowrance products. If they were, my decision would be made. We go up sturgeon fishing every April like a lot of you. Can anyone speak to the maps Lowrance now provides and how they compare to the Lakemaster maps for Minnesota.

Any help or feedback is most appreciated.

I can’t speak to the lowrance maps but I wanted to say the I have heard some great things about the Garmin maps. I saw their products at the sportshow and was pretty impressed. Garmin is now getting into the freshwater market and makes some pretty amazing stuff. The only thing they don’t do YET is the imaging. I was told that it is in the works.

I was in the same boat as you. I took a hard look at the Elite 7 as well. I loved all the features it was offering at that price.

I ended up going with a HDS 7 instead my reasoning was I had 2 older lakemaster chips that were compatable with the HDS in turn saving me $100 bucks on a new chip. I like the 2 year warranty on the HDS better then the 1 year warranty with the Elite. I am still a little scared with it being a new model for them that there could still be some bugs to be worked out. (yes i know elites have been around but not the 7)

There is also a $100 mail in rebate on the HDS 7 so with that and not having to buy a chip I was able to get it for about the same cost as the elite with a new chip.

I wont have the 3 screens or DI but I feel down the road I will be able to get my hands on a LSS unit for cheap since all the new units have them built in.

Good luck in your choice…

I have a couple Lowrance HDS units on my boat and one is the HDS7 and I really like it and the lakemaster chip works fine in it.

I did just buy the new Lowrance map chip for the other unit and it has good detail on Rainy River and Lake of the Woods. They have 2 versions of the Lowrance chip $100 and $150, the $100 is formatted similar to the lake master chip just has different color depth contour lines. The $150 includes google earth data, it was kind of cool but I didn’t see the value for fishing and the sales guy said the same thing because the depth contour lines will tell you how steep a break is anyway.