lowrance elite 7-ti questions

I am going to be purchasing a 7 inch screen side image depth finder soon and have it narrowed down to the helix 7 g2 and the elite 7-ti ( I have a post asking questions about the helix also). I am wondering how durable that huge transducer is, I duck hunt and trap out of my boat in the fall and like having my depth finder all the time and don't want to be breaking that thing at $300, I have never broke my current transducer on my lowrance x135 but it is a fraction of the size. For users of the insight genesis how do you like it and I have read some things about fees and was wondering how much it is to make a map, I was under the impression that it was free as long as you "shared" it but that dosen't seem to be the case, I am only really interested in depth map but think the bottom hardness and other stuff would be fun. If you have run both mapping from the insight genesis and humminbird autochart live which did you like better? How is this unit to operate from a newbie to this advanced of a depth finder standpoint? How is lowrance customer service in you experience? I'm sure I will think of more questions, thanks for all the help you can give me. This would be going on a 1652 mod v sea ark with tiller. I know this is peanuts for some when buying some depthfinders but it is a pretty big deal for me and want to get the right one first.

I also fish one lake that is stumpy. I bought one of the clamp on transom mounts that you can move up and down. Since I only use the side scan when idling, I have it set so it is out the water on plane.

Do you have a smaller transducer for when your rinning on plane that isn't si?

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Originally Posted by cootpatrol

Do you have a smaller transducer for when your rinning on plane that isn't si?

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Yes, I originally had an Elite 7 and Lowrance swapped it out to resolve a glitch in the Elite software and I have the Elite 7 transducer which is a 2D and DI combo along with the foot long SI one.

I use insight with my di unit, it is free for depth and contour mapping but you have to pay subscription for hardness and vegetation. It works as advertised and sometimes you get lucky and others share their maps for the water you are fishing which is nice. That being said it is cumbersome and time consuming, I can see how autochart live on the bird units would be a huge time saver.

I went with the helix 7 si g2 with autochart but I read somewhere that Lowrance is coming out with a update for some sort of autochart so that will be something to look into