Thread: SI or DI

Originally Posted by lazarus

i am looking to buy a unit. seems like most like humminbird. now what is the cheapest si model that is made by humminbird. lookin to spend about 500-600 bucks. should i be looking at color or blk and white? what about lowrance.. what are some of the models that compare to humminbird's si models. cant find anything on a lowrance model that says si

I bought my 798 from Brian at BBG Marine Electronics - I ordered online and got a great savings, I heard later if you called him, he can work some more pricing magic.
If you are spending the money, go color- definitly color. Humminbird (and Lowrance I'm sure) uses colors for different returns - like red for hard rock/sand - makes it easier to interpret the bottom compared to grayscale.
Lowrance calls theirs structure scan (or used to when I was looking last year). It is a 400-600 addon piece (depending on where you can find it). I think their units are cool and probably work equally as well as HB units. Just read lots of reviews of each to see what fits your style of fishing. To me, it was simply price, I got my HB unit for $750ish and the Lowrance was just over $1k for the unit.
I have a 798 and really like it. It was the cheapest I could get into sideimaging. I'm generally a bass fisherman, so turn the side scan down to 70-80 feet, make the entire screen just one side of the boat, and I scan docks for brushpiles/structure. Maybe 1 in 10 actually have structure to them, so I can concentrate my fishing time. What used to take me 2 hours of working a shoreline or row of docks, takes me 20 minutes to scan, focus on a few areas and connect with about the same amount of fish. If you're lucky, you can see schooling smallies and pick them off cast after cast.

what about the humminbird 778c ? is that an si and di ? would that be a decent one ?? any input would be great

The '9' series are all side imaging and DI - 798, 898, 998, 1198. I think Humminbird has software for other units to add DI to them, but you'd have to look that up.

Originally Posted by lazarus

what about the humminbird 778c ? is that an si and di ? would that be a decent one ?? any input would be great

The 778 is only a 2d sonar...

The SI designation will be in the model number if it's a SI unit....

Any SI unit will either have the DI software already installed ...or it can be updated with the DI software from HB...

The 798ci SI combo is going to be the lowest entry level SI unit...(Note: the new 2011 model 798 is designated as 798ci HD SI...which means nothing different (not even different pixel counts) from older 798's except that HB put the moniker of "HD" in the model number..

Rickie