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Posts: 87
| I want to get a new sonar this year but i don't know which one to get. right now i'm looking at the Humminbird 788 and the Lowrance HDS-5. What are the positives and negatives of each? Any help would be great thanks! |
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Posts: 568
Location: Lake St Clair | I dont know much about the 788ci except its on sale at the Gander Mountain for $439 this week. |
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Posts: 582
| i do know the positive about Hbird is that if you have a problem, their customer service will take care of it. They do answer the phone. |
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Posts: 1756
Location: Mt. Zion, IL | Lowrance gets my vote. I have owned a HDS 5 for 3 years now and have not had one issue. I have the lake insight model. I have my unit in a portable case that I made with a suction cup mount for the transducer. I had my HDS next to a 588SI and the Bird would black out over bait clouds and not read the bottom. His would not distinguish the difference between weed pockets and baitfish near the bottom either. You can use the HDS as a flasher too if you ice fish. I don't know much more about the bird, but if you have any questions about the HDS feel free to shoot me a message.
Just as a reference, both units were given a factory reset just before any testing was done to see "out of the box" differences. All testing was done on Lake Kinkaid. Lowrance's customer service has definitely come a long way also in the past few years. Buy what you like the best is the best advice ANYONE could give you.
Edited by RyanJoz 6/4/2012 9:40 AM
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Posts: 87
| im really interested mostly for the gps part of the units. i'm coming from using a vexilar forever and it will still be on the. but i need something so i can follow structure easier. is there a better unit for that? |
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Posts: 546
Location: MN | RyanJoz - 6/4/2012 9:23 AM
Lowrance gets my vote. I have owned a HDS 5 for 3 years now and have not had one issue. I have the lake insight model. I have my unit in a portable case that I made with a suction cup mount for the transducer. I had my HDS next to a 588SI and the Bird would black out over bait clouds and not read the bottom. His would not distinguish the difference between weed pockets and baitfish near the bottom either. You can use the HDS as a flasher too if you ice fish. I don't know much more about the bird, but if you have any questions about the HDS feel free to shoot me a message.
Just as a reference, both units were given a factory reset just before any testing was done to see "out of the box" differences. All testing was done on Lake Kinkaid. Lowrance's customer service has definitely come a long way also in the past few years. Buy what you like the best is the best advice ANYONE could give you.
IMO, you are not comparing two similar units. The HDS 5 with the Lake Insight and Structure Scan is a more expensive and advanced unit than the 588 SI. I would say that the 798ci HD SI is more comparable to the HDS 5 with those features. The power output on the 798ci HD SI is much higher than on the 588 SI, (which is no longer made) which is could be the cause for the black out issue you mentioned. Humminbird offers an ice pack as well for their units to convert them for ice fishing. I purchased a ram mount for my 798 SI and use it as my gps with a Lakemaster chip. Which, now that it comes to mind, are now exclusive to Humminbird since Johnson Outdoors now owns both Humminbird and LM.
This is not an attack on Ryan, but I just wanted to make sure you had some more information about the two units.
Edited by mtcook16 6/10/2012 7:53 PM
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Posts: 187
Location: West Metro, MN | I actually looked at both the 788ci and the HDS 5 this spring for quite a while. I didn't add the structure scan to the HDS unit yet, so i figured they were somewhat comparable. After talking to a bunch of people and pricing shopping like crazy, I really don't think you can go wrong with either. That being said, I ended up going with the HDS 5 because I liked the potential for networking and structure scan into the future and the display seemed a little brigher and sharper in sunlight than the HB and I liked the sonar better on the HDS. I actually liked the mapping features better on the HB because of the ability to still use Lakemaster chips moving and being able to do the water level offset and depth shading. If you are primarily looking at this for the mapping features I would strongly consider the HB with the Lakemaster chip. I ended up going with the HDS with the Navionics chip because I do some walleye fishing as well and the Navionics chip seems really good for the lakes that I fish, but think I would have been happy with either one. I do think overall you can probably get the HB on sale for a littler cheaper. |
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Posts: 437
| jackson - 6/4/2012 7:33 AM
i do know the positive about Hbird is that if you have a problem, their customer service will take care of it. They do answer the phone. Not true anymore. Maybe a few years ago, but the 3 times I called them the phone was answered promptly and any questions/issues I had were resolved on the call.
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