Lowrance 140-07 HDS-8 8-Inch Insight USA with 83/200kHz transducer Review

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.

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Product Description:
Lowrance HDS-8. 8-Inch chart plotter fish finder with built-in Insight USA charts. Includes a dual frequency 83/200kHz depth and temperature transom mount transducer, and a built in 16 channel WAAS GPS antenna.

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