What Sounder Do You Prefer?

[Poodroo]

I know that there is a huge selection of sounders on the market these days and a lot of different price brackets. What makes one brand any better than the next? What prompted me to ask the question is that my brother has had a Lowrance and been happy with it and I also have a Lowrance sounder in the old tinny and to be honest even for a basic sounder I found the Lowrance to be easy to read, accurate, and easy to use. Having recently invested in a new boat I received as part of the package a Hummingbird sounder. It is hard to tell at this stage if it is as accurate because the conditions have not been exactly ideal for fishing the bay so my couple of attempts have not been overly successful. So I just wanted to weigh up the pros and cons of sounders and see what you people out there think of all the brands out there based on your own experiences. Thanks in advance,

Poodroo

[Tangles]

Poodroo,
mate what model hummingbird did you get?

mike

[Hamish73]

I have a humminbird matrix 17. Thought it was crap first outing (it was also blowing a gale that day) Now I have used it in better conditions, and made a few adjustments (frequency setup etc I think) I am getting along with it quite well. Its definately no 620, but for the $$ it suits a hack like me ok. One feture I like is to be able to constantly display the battery voltage on the screen, and the fact that it has a low voltage alarm.

The main bitch I have about it is that the nmea cable isnt included which is pretty crappy IMO. Also the relatively large transducer plug made installataion a PITA

[NAGG]

In the 2 boats I've owned , I've had 5 sounders ( JRC... big colour cathode tube job which was great when it worked , A Garmin & 3 Lowrances with 2 on my current hornet) ...... I've had problems with all of them ... with 3 having multiple issues Nagg
PS ..... If I was to buy again ... I'd look at Furuno ( never heard a bad thing said about them)

[finga]

A good sounder will work and be accurate in all conditions.
That's their job.
I want mine to work better in the ikky stuff to be honest.

IMO Furuno is pretty good and a lot better then Humminbird dollar for dollar.
I have Furuno and Humminbird 727

[Hamish73]

A good sounder will work and be accurate in all conditions.
That's their job.
I want mine to work better in the ikky stuff to be honest.

IMO Furuno is pretty good and a lot better then Humminbird dollar for dollar.
I have Furuno and Humminbird 727

but no sounder work properly when the transducer is out of the water AFAIK which can happen a bit in smaller boats when the chop gets up a bit

[Poodroo]

Poodroo,
mate what model hummingbird did you get?

mike

G'day Mike, I got the basic PiranhaMax210 single beam.

Poodroo

[Far side]

I have 2
Garmin GPS4008 with the sounder module its pretty good and I use it in the bay
For offshore I have a KODEN this unit while older technology has not missed a beat and when you drive it right you miss nothing

I have used navman as well they are ok for the price you pay

[finga]

but no sounder work properly when the transducer is out of the water AFAIK which can happen a bit in smaller boats when the chop gets up a bit

What does AFAIK mean??
Try the settings (including transducer) a bit. It might take some effort to get going okky dooky

[davez104]

AFAIK = As Far As I Know

[Hamish73]

thanks finga. Transducer is mounted on the wrong side of the boat to start with, so get a bit of interference whilst underway, but it's perfect at rest

[Vindicator]

I just got a furuno 585 for Chrissy which I think is the ducks nuts.

Cheers
Kezza

[Tangles]

Poo

im just starting to get the hang of my hummingbird after a lot of mucking around and reading the threads here etc, i personally reckon that you could have the biggest and best sounder, but if you cant read it or understand it, well it aint worth a lot.

I still have a long way to go to understand the finer points of sounders like some of the ausfishers who have kindly contributed to the sticky thread. And I want to get into some prawning soon, so theres another thing to learn and experiment.

Reckon the funniest thing was when i used a sounder for the first time, the screen was filled with fish symbols did i catch a fish?

mike

[snelly1971]

I have 2
Garmin GPS4008 with the sounder module its pretty good and I use it in the bay
For offshore I have a KODEN this unit while older technology has not missed a beat and when you drive it right you miss nothing

I have used navman as well they are ok for the price you pay

I have a Garmin 3210 Plotter which is capable of running a 2 kw sounder...I would be interested in seeing how they perform...

But my Furuno 585 is doing the job just fine.

Mick

[FNQCairns]

I have a Furuno 4100 and wouldn't buy it again, I don't know if mine is a bad one but it's shit to try and see with polaroids on at any time and it greys out real fast in the sun.

With the Lowrance units my only complaint is the skimmer transducers are junk and I got sick of replacing forget how many over 20 odd years.

If I could get a lowrance with the brain of the Furuno and the transducer of the Furuno I would be happier.

The Furuno no joke 28 to 32deg full sun and 1/2 hour later the display is totally unreadable I throw a towl over it and it will stay half readable with a bit of guessing, if I had not lived with other sounders for hundreds of trips I would probably consider this to be expected but it's not!

cheers fnq