I enjoy my 997 unit and it has helped me catch more fish. I now need to tell humminbird that they need lessons in GPS from Garmin. I feel that garmin has humminbirds GPS beat hands down. I have never seen such a pain in the arse to manage waypoints like humminbird wants you to do it. You also cannot navigate the cursor by the pad without frustration because everytime you get close to a waypoint it wants to stop for a split second. The boat is too big on the Humminbird GPS and the waypoint icon is too large also. Garmin is so much easier and more user friendly.
The 20 degree sonar image from Humminbird is terrible in my opinion. It has to be one the worst sonars on the market. Lowrance definitely stands above the competition in this area. I even think that my 240 garmin 20 degree sonar is better than my 997 humminbird.
It is a good thing that humminbird has the only side image available. It definitely shows you what is on the bottom in great detail. The side image is wonderful. It is a good thing that I bought my 997 for the side image because the sonar and the GPS from humminbird need drastic improvement in my opinion.