Lowrance Elite-5 DSI Fishfinder/Chartplotter opinion please!

[mutt248]

Hi Everyone,

I'm looking in to purchasing the Lowrance Elite-5 DSI finder for my father-in-law and I was wondering if anybody had any opinions about it and or maybe another unit might be a better choice.

http://www.lowrance.ca/Products/Marine/Elite-Series/Elite-5-DSI/

We will be mainly using it on Georgian Bay (Honey Harbour area)

Thanks in advance!

Shane

 

[iamnickevans]

This unit does NOT offer traditional sonar, it only has down imaging and GPS. Make sure if you are going to purchase this unit that you buy the correct NAVIONICS card for the honey harbour area. You would need to purchase NAVIONCS PLATINUM CARD for the most accurate map of honey harbour. I am debating buying this unit myself and have tested the unit before. I found this unit to be very slow and not user friendly in my opinion. The Lowrance HDS5 or Humminbird 597 i think is a better option and worth the few hundred bucks more.

 

[mutt248]

This unit does NOT offer traditional sonar, it only has down imaging and GPS. Make sure if you are going to purchase this unit that you buy the correct NAVIONICS card for the honey harbour area. You would need to purchase NAVIONCS PLATINUM CARD for the most accurate map of honey harbour. I am debating buying this unit myself and have tested the unit before. I found this unit to be very slow and not user friendly in my opinion. The Lowrance HDS5 or Humminbird 597 i think is a better option and worth the few hundred bucks more.

Yeah Nick.... I starting to share the same opinion as you. I went my Sail yesterday and checked out the Humminbird 597 and I think that might be the route I'm going to go. Don't get me wrong the DSI technology is really awesome and exposes actual images of all the structure that for the most part we would not know existed but in the attempt to keep things simple for my father-in-law the 597 has every thing we will need, and besides, I can use the flasher mode for ice fishing! lol

The Navionics software is pretty awesome actually! I down loaded there iPhone app a while back and works and functions beautifully. Assuming that the chip maps are even better it will definitely be in my future as well.

 

[diggyj]

I actually bought the Elite-5 at the Sportsman show in 2012 last year and used it all summer. It worked awsome last season and put me on lots of fish. I highly recommend it. Great sonar and GPS, great for entering waypoints, etc.

I buddy of mine bought the Elite-5 DSI model against my recommendations and he is not happy with it. The Lowrance guy also did not recommend it for Rice Lake as it is to weedy and shallow. It is not a typical sonar as mentioned and works only for down imaging. If that is what you want then buy it and it will work great on deeper lakes but you will not see fish arches. He regrets buying it as he is not seeing fish and therefore not catching. LOL

Dirk

 

[iamnickevans]

Yeah Nick.... I starting to share the same opinion as you. I went my Sail yesterday and checked out the Humminbird 597 and I think that might be the route I'm going to go. Don't get me wrong the DSI technology is really awesome and exposes actual images of all the structure that for the most part we would not know existed but in the attempt to keep things simple for my father-in-law the 597 has every thing we will need, and besides, I can use the flasher mode for ice fishing! lol

The Navionics software is pretty awesome actually! I down loaded there iPhone app a while back and works and functions beautifully. Assuming that the chip maps are even better it will definitely be in my future as well.

The Navionics Iphone app has the most updated charts for every water body, If you want the same detailed maps for every lake that the Iphone app has you will have to purchase several Navionics chips. Before you buy the chips try to Demo them at a store so you know exactly what you are getting, if I were you I would spend a few hours going over everything before you purchase it because they usually do not offer refunds on opened chip cards.

 

[diggyj]

I have that APP on my iPhone but very rarely use it as the battery drains super fast but it does come in handy every once in a while for the details.

Dirk