New Lowrance HDS units

I worked the Toronto Sportsman show for the last five days in the Lowrance booth. I had alot of time to play with the new High Definition units that came out this spring. All I can say is WOW. The picture, clarity is phenomanal. The new Solar Max screen makes viewing the screen from any angle crystal clear. The new units come with a two year warranty that should make consumers feel alot more secure about dolling out the big dollars for some of the bigger units. This year all the HDS units come with a built in broadband sounder. I had alot of people ask questions about the broad band, seems it wasnt out long enough for people to fully understand what it really did. It was designed for saltwater deep sea fishing where anglers where searching for fish on structure hundreds of feet deep. It does have alot to offer us shallow fresh water anglers as well.
I had added a broad band to my unit last year and loved it. Makes finding smallmouth on Erie alot easier on bottom among rocks. They call this ability target seperation. For trollers, it will show individual hooks more clearly from pods of bait. It also keeps its bottom lock better when traveling at higher speeds. I can be cruising at 40 and still be able to detect bottom hardness that may hold fish.
Another great feature the new HDS units have is the ability to read the new Navionics Platinum Plus chips. When installed in an HDS unit, not only does it show contour lines, it also shows what looks like satellite images of bottom contours. Alot like looking at google earth but much more pronounced. For example, a well known point in lake Erie shows multiple rock piles and humps strewn around its outer edges. The only way anglers would have found any of these humps would have been to drift or drive over them and mark them on their gps. Now, you can see each of the humps and how far out they actually are. Many people where very impressed and I can see how it will make a difference when looking for isolated pieces of structure that may have never been fished.
I am looking forward to trying out one of these units on my boat this spring. If you ever get a chance to spend a day on the water with me, I can point out all of these amazing new features on the new HDS units.