Value for Money ??

[Thunderace2]

G’day , been a lurker for a while and will soon be getting the the father in laws boat, similar to the stacer 414 shown here. I’ll be fishing rivers, lakes and protected bays (ie lake Illawarra, shoalhaven river, Jervis Bay) no offshore stuff. It has no electronics at all so I’m after some advice regarding what would be the best value I can get out of the limited money that I have

I’ve got a budget of about $1000 and after doing much research I’ve come up with a couple of options
1) Northstar 538i Chartplotter $429 (Just use inbuilt mapping) or Garmin GPSMAP 450 $600
2) Lowrance Elite-5X $600 Colour 480*480 Humminbird 737X B&W 640 *320 $600 humminbird 718X B&W 320*320 $349 lowrance Mark 5X B&W 480*480 $260
(the B*W would keep me to the $1000 budget)

OR
Lowrance HDS5 colour480*480 Combo $1000 or Humminbird 788cXi colour 640*640 $1089
These are prices from Bias/Whitworth

Obviously there is the decision between two units and a combo, but with a combo, I assume that you get a better fishfinder ???
So the question is what would be a better value for money for my kind of fishing or do you have another option. Thanks for any replies
Stuart

[BrettoM]

I went through a similar thought process and have just ordered a humminbird 788cxi for my new hornet trophy. For what I do and for space reasons prefer the combo unit and the five inch screen seems o.k.

[Dan5]

The Garmin 450.......and a Garmin 400c would keep you in colour.and still around the $1000 mark....the 400c is a brilliant little sounder....for the money

Dan

[dreemon]

Whitwoths has the garmin 551s combo for $ 899,
5 in colour screen, I've got the 451 4 in, good lill unit,

unplug the tranducer when playing with it or punching in gps marks as the trannys can get hot when there not in water to cool em down. cheers

Also with the g2 vision card and the 3D screens, when you put on the 3D glasses from the cinemas the 3D looks 100 X better, couldn't beleive it till I saw it !

[Thunderace2]

c'mon guys, must be more people out ther with some opinions, everyone has one ????

[Noelm]

I guess almost all units these days are good, for a small boat, I reckon nothing beats a combo unit, for the areas you are looking at boating, depth will not be an issue for the sounder, so high power is not needed, go for the biggest screen with the best resolution, I think Garmin is a good package, simply because they are very simple to use, but then after you own it for a while, anything is easy.

[siegfried]

fURUNO 620 from seppoland will be about a grand. I reckon fit the best sounder you can and hunt around for a basic GPS, you dont need a flash plotter with charts and $hit straight away but a good sounder will be your best friend. When you get e few bob together a gps upgrade might be the go. I know its easy to spend other fullas money but its just a suggestion , good luck