Elite 4 hdi

[fishwing]

I would make the ice 35 my first choice of the two and use the Lowrance as the backup if those were my choices. I used my Elite 7HDI yesterday but I finished the day using my Showdown 5.6 dual beam. The battery life is about triple with the Showdown, it has interference rejection settings that will work with other sonar and in some situations it works much better for displaying my bait and the fish. My backup and loaner unit is a Vexilar FL8se. The Vexilar and Showdown have been used close together with an ice 35 and all units performed well together.

[Kevin23]

Do you have amplitude scope on? The right side of the lowrance IS a showdown.   

[fishwing]

Using the amplitude scope is irrelevant, use it if you like it. It definitely does not make a Lowrance into a Showdown.

[Kevin23]

It is exactly like a showdown, in color. You must not have your elite set up correctly.

[fishwing]

The setup on my Lowrance is good and it works well away from other sonar. I used both this past weekend. The Showdown has the ability to use it near other sonar, much longer battery life and was better at showing my jig and the crappie yesterday without the brush cluttering up my display as much on the 20 degree setting and the 9 degree worked even better. My Lowrance can work well in certain ice fishing situations but in others no amount of going through all the menus really does any good. I want to go out and catch fish not mess around with a sonar too much especially when I have two other sonars that perform better much of the time. I will use the Lowrance on the ice again this season but I should have left it behind last weekend, it wasn't needed for the GPS. It is great in situations where it works well but in other situations it just doesn't work well.

[fishwing]

I have also consulted with Lowrance customer service, they confirmed that I have the correct transducer and setup. I have followed their recommendations. They say that I will get interference from other nearby sonar at the same frequency. The interference can be bad enough to make it completely worthless. The next sonar that I buy for ice fishing would probably be another Vexilar or Marcum and I would buy another transducer to use it all year long on a boat too.

[matzilla]

Decided to hold off on the helix until I can get one cheaper than the standard MSRP, hopefully closer to spring. I still need it for the boat but will have to make up my mind if I want to use it for ice fishing next year or not.

http://www.threeriversmarine.net/

call them up....great people to deal with

[RStock521]

Its been freezing again lately. Heard back from lowrance, its past its 1 year warranty per the serial number(goes by when its manufactured and not when you bought it) so there is nothing they can do.

I will be selling the unit and never buying anything lowrance again.

Did you buy it with a credit card?  I know most of mine give you 1 year extension on the warranty. Worth checking, might be able to get your money back. Personally, I've had great luck with my Elite 5 HDI and couldn't imagine fishing without it

[ICEHOLE]

my first year with elite 4x hdi on the ice. i love it. I do have to adjust setting from depth to depth but graph mode is really cool feature, amplitude scope works good as well. I recommend it!

[spam]

I have had the elite 5 for 3 years now and it is so great works flawless even with other sonars weird you guys have so many issues! My guess is u guys are not using the scope and graph mode pretty much the cats meow compared to a flasher!

[Kevin23]

Decided to hold off on the helix until I can get one cheaper than the standard MSRP, hopefully closer to spring. I still need it for the boat but will have to make up my mind if I want to use it for ice fishing next year or not.

Instead I picked up an ice 35 off L&M for $259 and free shipping. I will use this until i can get this lowrance stuff sorted out, then keep the 35 for a backup/loaner unit which will come in very handy when fishing with family who do not have flashers. I do like the standard graph mode better than a flasher display though, so hopefully I can get the elite 4 back from lowrance before the ice season is over.

Management contacted me from my facebook rant and said they would be happy to "fix" the situation and repair/replace the unit under warranty. They sent me a RMA last thurs and i just sent off the unit to them today. i will keep the thread updated as the situation progresses. Hoping for a good outcome.

Got an email today saying they do not have any 4x hdi units left so they will send a 4x chirp instead. That should fix the issues since the problem was in the software of the unit.

[Nitro16]

Nothing wrong with that. Their customer service has been great to me. The zipper pull tab on my ice machine broke first time out on the walk out. Called them up, sent me brand new bag and told me to keep the old one. All I needed was the pull tab but now I have an extra bag, can't complain

[Kevin23]

I got my new unit today. All seems well. Have to test it on the ice this weekend. They sent me a whole new "kit". Elite 4x chirp with downscan, with all the hardware, power cord, and hdi transducer with dsi. So i got a free ducer and power cord out of the deal. I guess that makes up for not being able to use my sonar for almost all of the ice season.

[Rugburn]

Does anyone know if the HDI units can run a Navionics + micro SD card?