I have always had crummy electronics on crummy boats. Now I finally would like to upgrade electronics (hopefully the boat too soon). I am pretty sold on the combos with side imaging and down imaging but I'm torn between Hummingbird and Lowrance.

What's unique about my situation is that I am hoping to have two boats next time this year, one full sized aluminum or glass boat for my big local lakes (Guntersville, Smith Lake, Wheeler, Weiss, etc) and another small aluminum boat for my local city water lake with a 10 hp limit. It is just 10 miles down the road and they are damming up a second one just a couple miles from my home. I'd like to have both the bow unit and console unit be GPS and SI equipped. I was hoping one brand would allow me to easily equip both boats with transducers and mounts and just swap the unit between the two depending on which boat I use.

Through my research so far, I have found that the Lowrance HDS Gen2 seems like the best deal for one boat with a network setting. Their units aren't too expensive, only one Structurescan add-on is needed for both units, and only one Navionics card is needed. The Structuremap feature is something I also like that Humminbird lacks. The issue with Lowrance and Structure scan is that I would need one for each boat as it doesnt look easy to swap it out between boats.

Hummingbird seems good as well but I noticed only the really expensive units can be networked. Not a huge deal since the units themselves have side imaging but I'm assuming that would mean you would need two Navionics chips for each unit. An advantage Humminbird has over Lowrance though, is it looks easier to swap between boats since each unit has side imaging as long as I have the right transducer mounted.

So can anyone offer any advice here? Anyone been in a similar situation wanting to run good electronics on two boats? Is one brand better for this or will I really end up spending about the same amount of money no matter which way I go?