User Reviews Send this to a friend
 
Manufacturer: Lowrance
Customer Rating:
 
Sale Price: $1,821.86
Availibility: Usually ships in 24 hours
Free Shipping Available
Buy Now
 
  • Bundles Lowrence HDS-8 GPS chartplotter/fishfinder with Insight USA maps and 83/200kHz transducer with temperature sensor and 20-foot cable.
  • Eight-inch SolarMAX Plus display is sunlight viewable, for bright and clear wide-angle viewing.
  • Built-in Broadband Sounder for ultra-sensitive, high-definition fish finding in all cover, in thermoclines, and in all water conditions.
  • Super sensitive 16-channel internal GPS antenna with faster time-to-signal lock and precision position, for high-definition GPS and mapping.
  • Advanced networking and expandability with Ethernetworks and NMEA 2000 performance networking options
BUGGY software and Poor Charts!
 
Review Date: July 21, 2009
Reviewer: Linden Beckham, Delta Junction, AK
Lowrance HDS-8 with Insight and Navionics Platinum for South Central Alaska

I had high hopes for this unit. Unfortunately, Lowrance and Navionics seem intent on marketing products that are simply not ready for the customer. I live in Alaska and fish the south central area, Kenai Peninsula, Cook Inlet, North Gulf Coast, and Prince William Sound. I'll start with the charts first. The Lowrance Base map is crude compared to Garmin. The depths are tiny, nearly impossible to read, especially when underway. They numbers are north oriented only, which means if you are using "Course Up" and heading south, you better be able to read the numbers upside down or sideways. There are also LOTS of errors in the mapping. Where land should be you have sea, where sea should be you have land. BE VERY CAREFUL if using this in the fog. It also does not show submerged or awash rocks as well as the Garmin does. The Insight chart is worse and absolutely useless in Alaska, it is so highly pixilated that all detail is unreadable and ends up being a huge blob. Do not spend any money for this worthless feature. OK, now for the very spendy Navionics charts. It is VERY buggy and not ready for public consumption. When I can get the data to display, which takes multiple reboots and other fiddling, it too is north oriented so again you better learn to read upside down or sideways. It suffers from the same tiny little fonts that cannot be changed. When a waypoint is selected, you get no data displayed such as time, distance, bearing, lat/long or any other useful information like my 6 year old Garmin gives me. The only way to get it to display is to pan the cursor to the location you want to go to and leave it there. Now you have a little window in the lower left corner with all the info displayed. The sonar seems to be pretty decent but I have yet to get anything close to the little fish arches they advertise on the screen regardless of depth. I can see the fish and structure pretty well and even saw jigs descending to the bottom or on the retrieve. There are lots of other little quirks with this unit and I could write volumes about them, but I'm not being paid to do that. I am trying to educate potential buyers of a poor product. Bottomline: Sonar is good. Software and charts SUCK! Stick with Garmin or be prepared for major disappointment.
Not ready for the North Atlantic
 
Review Date: August 4, 2009
Reviewer: J. Barclay,
We boat Cape Ann to Cape Cod Massachusetts. Certain important navigational aids are non- existent or unreadable. (i.e.- Boston Light, the Bell at Scituate Harbor, Minot's Light) Depths are impossible to read on the charts - positioning is way off. Using this while boating is like driving without street signs or route numbers. We fell back to using visual aids only , which can be treacherous in many of the areas we travel. In a haze or dim light it would be impossible to navigate. We went back to using our old Lowrance LCX 18c. Next time we will try Raymarine.

Related Articles

  • Lowrance 000-0140-21 HDS5 Base 5-Inch Fishfinder
  • Lowrance 000-0140-05 HDS7 Base 6.4-Inch Fishfinder
  • Lowrance LCX-113C HD Fish Finder GPS (50/200 kHz Transducer)
  • Lowrance 112-61 iWay 350C Portable GPS Navigator and MP3 Player and Picture Viewer
  • Lowrance Endura Sierra 000-0125-40 2.7-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

Tagged with: • • • • • • •

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!