Internal gps’s (help)

Hi all! I just sold a lowrance 522 and am ready to buy a new unit. I liked the sonar on the lowrance BUT, i hated the thing other than that. It had the internal gps antenna and it was constantly losing signal. So much it rendered it 100% useless imo (the gps portion). Even when on large lakes in the complete open i had these problems. I played around with the humminbird 385ci at gander and liked it alot. Sweet little finder!!!

So my question is: how well do the internal gps humminbird units work? I will save my money and buy the non gps version if they all have these issues. External is not an option on my jon boat.

I have had good luck with my external antenna. I made it portable by mounting the screen and the antenna on top of an old tackle box. I put an 8 amp 12 volt battery inside, use a clamp-on transducer holder and use it in any boat. I move mine between my river boat and my lake boat and never leave it out overnight (don’t want to challenge anyone’s honesty). I use it (my Humminbird si) in Canada on my friends boat with a trolling motor adapter for the transducer.

My Humminbird 787 with the internal GPS works great!
Hey Iowegian, which SI Humminbird did you make portable?

One question. If you didn’t use the gps in the past, do you need it now?

Just trying to save you some money. Personally I couldn’t be without a gps.

Was the Internal gps unit mounted or housed in a location that hindered a clear arial view? -Mark

It would all depend on how you were going to mount it but, I believe RAM makes a mount now that you could mount the external puck right behind the unit. All on the same bracket. Just an idea

I had a 522 also and hated the thing. I sold it and went to a humminbird 798 with the puck and I absolutely love the unit. I have had no problems at all with it in any way and it is 10x more user friendly.

I got a 797 csi when Cabelas closed them out. I would like to have the larger screen but this works well with my bifocals at $1,000 less. I recently updated the software so I have down imaging now also. I had it out on the river last week and really liked the new color options and the down imaging identified a couple rocks really well.

I have the LMS 334c igps and it never keeps a signal. It is mounted at the front of the boat, which is wide open. It use to be at the console and worked pretty well. Iam not sure what happened, I’ve heard that the update version 1.7 might be a problem. I cannot find version 1.6 to go back to. I have a 520c with the external antennae, on the console, and this gets a signal in seconds and rarely ever loses it. I am seriously thinking of going to Hummingbird.

not sure on the huminbird internal antenna. But I have the HDS 10 and 7 and I have not had an issue with losing signal. I heard that they made a big improvement with the internal, but since I can’t compare to an older lowrance I am not sure how bad they used to be. the only complaint I have with the new HDS units is that it currently has a slow refresh rate which is supposed to be sped up by the latest software update, or I can go with the external puck and get a refresh rate of 5 times/sec.

if you are contemplating not even getting the GPS combo, then the refresh rate wouldn’t likely be an issue for you and the new units with the better internal antennae should suit you fine.

Thanks for the feedback. I really dont want an external. Im actually considering the 385 portabke with the soft pack. I dont always need gps but its nice to have to mark spots. Dont mind spendin a little more to have it. Just want to make sure it keeps a signal most time unlike my 522. Itll be sittin in a jon boat in its soft pack. Most likely be sittin on the bottom of the boat. Geez, how clear of a view do these things need lol?