Humingbird vs lowrance.

[DRH1175]

I have used Lowrance products for years and have liked them. What are the advantages of the humingbirds over the lowrance. Someone told me they are way more advanced but in what ways?

[Sandmannd]

Biggest thing if you have the money is side imaging. Have a buddy who has it and it's a really sweet feature.

[croixflats]

I wonder how the side imaging works in rough water. I can see it being a good tool for bass fishing but I dont see how good it would be for walley.

I think each company has there own bennifits. I sure would not say one has better technoligy than the other it comes down to what you want the sounder/chartplotter to do for you.

For me the Garmin will satisfy my needs.

[Sandmannd]

Worked fine when I was out with him in some pretty choppy water.

[reddog]

Rough water will have little or no effect on side imaging.

Not good for walleyes, but good for bass? I dont see the difference.

You are correct, both have good sounder and chart capabilities. Hbird has SI.

I'll be without SI when the pry it from my cold dead hands.

[PerchJerker]

In my opinion HB has an advantage if you want Side Imaging, and Lowrance has an advantage if you want to use LakeMaster chips or any of the mapping options other than Navionics. I think those are the only significant differences.

Both companies make a great product and they get better every year. It's hard to imagine just how much better these units could get, or what more they could do for you.

[Shack]

I will say a very slight down fall to SI and Humm. is the first season you own/have it, you have learn it. I got SI last spring, used it a ton last summer and barely scratched the surface on the learning curve. The manual is the same size as most bibles I would never trade SI though

That said, I would own nothing but Humminbird for open water

The Nav. chip is great in the Bird, the sonar is second to none and then SI. I found my self using the sonar more than the SI last summer. The flasher feature Humm. has built into their units is great also.

Big waves might have an effect on SI, as well as turning tight will distort. Short of that, nothing bad to say from me on Humminbird. Very reliable!

[backlash 1]

Can you zoom in any closer on the hummingbirds than you can with lowrance, using the Navionics chip, or is it still the same 1/16 mi?

[Deitz Dittrich]

You can zoom in scary close on my unit.. I have the 08' Nav chip and a 997.

[fishwater]

You can zoom in scary close

The Humminbirds will tell you that you are OVERZOOMED at a certain point, you can make a break look like a flat if you want.. The birds also allow you to select different depths to be shaded a different color on the display.

[veha44]

"Can you zoom in any closer on the humminbirds than you can with lowrance, using the Navionics chip, or is it still the same 1/16 mi?"

Yes you can zoom in closer then 1/16 of a mile, but you can also do that with most new Lowrances and many of the older ones have updates now where you can do it with them too. I think only some of the handhelds do not allow you to zoom in closer then 1/16 now.

"I wonder how the side imaging works in rough water. I can see it being a good tool for bass fishing but I dont see how good it would be for walleye"

I guess you would have to define rough, up to 2-3ft not really an issue with my 690t. You do start to see the bottom get wavy the bigger the waves get, if your boat bobs more then it bottom will be wavier. The transducer sits on the back of the boat which rocks the least. Finding a rock pile tucked in next to a weed edge or seeing an extra little group of rocks hanging off the main rock pile, or where the inside turns are on a weed flat or breakline or even seeing where the biggest rocks lie will help you put more walleyes in the boat. I took mine to the Rainy and marked where all of the log piles were so we didn't snag so many jigs.

[eyebjim]

SI works very well for walleye fishing. I definitely will not go back. I have had lowrance up till now and they have very good units too but the Birds are very nice and the SI is outstanding.

[PerchJerker]

"Can you zoom in any closer on the humminbirds than you can with lowrance, using the Navionics chip, or is it still the same 1/16 mi?"

Yes you can zoom in closer then 1/16 of a mile, but you can also do that with most new Lowrances and many of the older ones have updates now where you can do it with them too. I think only some of the handhelds do not allow you to zoom in closer then 1/16 now.

That is correct, the Lowrance combo units and globalmap units will zoom in with Nav just as far as they will with LakeMaster. It's just the iFinders like the H2Os and Expedition that will not zoom in very far with the Nav chips.

[woodboat]

You want to consider customer service and product reliability when your comparing the two companies. Humminbirds customer service is first rate. They are quick to respond and stand behind their products. I've even seen the Humminbird technical staff monitoring many of the fishing blogs and answering many product questions directly on-line. Lowrance on the other hand has horrible customer service and their reliability is suspect at best. Just do a search on "Lowrance" on this site to see some of the horror stories people are dealing with concerning Lowrances customer service and product support. Many of the latest Lowrance (non-HD) units have problems reading shallow water and weeds. Lowrance just recently posted a BETA software release to fix this problem. Whether it works or not has yet to be determined. Lowrance pretty much ignored and/or denied even having these problems until they were ready to release the new HD versions. In the mean time, a lot of Lowrance customers that spent a lot of money have had to deal with a lot of frustrations and sonar setting tweaks just to (maybe)make the units work in shallow water. Just to be fair, Lowrance does sell a lot more units than Humminbird does so you have to factor that into the failure rates but it shouldn't factor into the units reliability or other problems.

I also find it kind of interesting that Lowrance is now copying Humminbird when it comes to unit features and capabilities. Humminbird has had dual beam sonar frequency for quit a while and Lowrance's new HD units now have it as well. Same for hot keys, higher screen resolutions, better GPS antenna reception, etc, etc. That tells me that Humminbird is ahead of Lowrance when it comes to product inovations. The new Lowrance HD appears to be nothing more that an enhanced digital oversampling of the same old analog sonar signal. While this will give you a very vivid display, the information displayed is a digital representation of what the sonar unit is interpreting. This interpretation might or might not be a true representation of what is actually going on below the water surface. It will be a very nice looking display of inccurate information. Side Imaging is a completely different technology that shows a far more accurate representation of the bottom structure.

Before I get beat up to badly on this post let me add that I currently have Lowrance units (113cHD and 520C). When it's time to replace them (soon I think) I will most likely switch over to Humminbird.

[gunflint]

I have been a Lawrance user for years. I'll probably be upgrading soon and the SI intrigues me. I am looking forward to hearing about Lowrance's HD But at this point I could go either way. I would like to add that my experience with customer service at Lowrance has been top notch and very impressive.

[hitthebricks]

I have the 997 and mainly fish walleyes and crappies and find the side imaging in deep water very easy to use and read. I can see where on the structure the fish are, the shape of the stucture, schools of Bait fish with larger fish under them, Crappie cribs on Rainy lk and see if there is fish on them. Now I just need to get them to bite.