Garmin review

[Cal64]

Recently bought a discontinued 53cv.  Bought it mainly for open water, but I made it into a portable unit and have taken it on to the ice a lot. Here are my initial thoughts.
- I would say that most dedicated Marcums, birds and vexlars would beat this unit in hard water conditions, having trouble with small hooks in deep water.
- the technology in this unit is amazing, map making software, gps , stored lake maps.
- to anyone looking for an open water unit that they can take on the ice once in a while ( I think that is a lot of people). You should really look at this technology.
- the learning curve is steep, this thing does so much, that it is not plug and play. You have to be willing to play with settings and get to know the unit. I think hole hoppers would hate it, as some settings revert to auto every time the unit is powered on.
- for my style of fishing ( move very little ) I love this thing. I now have the ability to make a contour map of my favourite lake in summer, then use the same unit to fish it in winter.
- garmin has added hard water technology, almost as an after thought. It's not the best, and the instructions for settings are almost nonexistent.
- garmin is close to revolutionizing ice fishing, they don't have it just yet, but if you can't justify a separate hard water unit I think garmin is worth a serious look

[Drift Dodger]

For a little more regarding the Garmin echoMAP CHIRP 53dv see my review posted on the 'Electronics' board: http://www.iceshanty.com/ice_fishing/index.php?topic=346045.0.

[DTro]

I too recently picked up a discontinued 73sv.     For those in the market, keep in mind that due to pending litigation, Garmin has changed their transducers.   Rather than having a dedicated down viewing crystal (which was the focus of the lawsuit from Lowrance/Navico) they removed the crystal and now blending the 2 side images together.   If you have the CV transducer it does not have a down viewing crystal, if you have a GT transducer its an older model and does.  The jury is still out about how much this changes the downview,  but I’ve seen a few images that show a pretty big difference and also a video that claims there is an actual dead spot below the boat.    Having said all that, the price was great and I’m looking forward to running it this summer and then taking it out on the ice this winter.    Speaking of which, for those of you with the non, chirp units, I was told by Garmin that the ice ducer will not work, but others have tried it and it WILL indeed work, you just need to run it at 200 kHz (15 degrees).

[hays47]

If you get a different model Garmin. Read up on the Panoptix PS-21. Garmin has a few videos of these being used on the ice. One shows anglers finding a school of gills 50 foot away from the fish finder. Almost all of the chirp models support the panoptix plus the ice ducer.

Due to Ohio's abbreviated ice season could not test for myself this year but ready for next year.

Above link to just one of the videos. If you cannot see the advantage of this you aren't thinking hard enough. Main draw back is expense though they aren't cheap. Since I use one for open water expense for me was minimal.

[Cal64]

The other garmin review in electronics helped me out a lot, thanks.
Just got my ice transducer. And am going to try it tomorrow. These older non chirp models will only run it at 200khz. So I'll let you know if I think it's worth it. Still have 30 inches of ice, but it's going fast

[bowski76]

I also bought a discontinued Garmin STRIKER 5dv. I spoke to a rep at West Marine and he told me it was being replaced with the Garmin STRIKER 5cv, he said they're exactly alike. Now after reading about the lawsuit, I guess this is why they changed the model #.

[DTro]

FYI the 73SV is on sale at Cabelas for $449 right now.

http://www.cabelas.com/product//2412938.uts?searchPath=%2Fbrowse.cmd%3FcategoryId%3D734095080%26CQ_search%3Dgarmin%2B73sv

[Cal64]

The post about the cv transducers having a blind spot, or at least a week spot straight down explains a lot. I played with mine for hours. I could get it to work, but felt it was very limited. Today I took my new ice transducer out, and to say the least the 53cv with an ice ducer , even if it only works on 200 kHz. Is amazing!!. The improvement was 500%. Took my hook off and could see swivel to The bottom(40 feet). This is now my go to unit, and is as good or better than anything I have seen. All the garmin models floating around out there is very confusing, but if any body gets one, and isn't satisfied with the performance of the open water transducer in hard water conditions, don't hesitate to try the ice ducer!!!

[Cal64]

Ok, one more post on a few of the settings. This info would have helped me, when I was researching garmin, and I'm going to assume that the many garmin models will have similar settings.
Flasher- this feature works, and works well, but it is very basic. I could not figure out how to zoom in on different depths. If you are a diehard flasher fan, you may not like this feature.

Split zoom- this was my favourite setting, it's a traditional sonar view, so you have a history to look at. The scroll speed can be adjusted for more or less history. Half the screen is the full water column, and the other half is a zoomed in amount( any amount you want), at any depth you want.

A-scope- this feature, when combined with the split zoom, turns the right side of both sonar views into a vertical flasher. You then have a showdown like view with a history. The info on the right is also expanded, this gives you incredible target separation. Playing with my hook on bottom I would guess it at under 2 inches.

Fish alarm- this was a fun setting, it took a lot of playing to get it set right, but I was able to get it to alarm when a fish would enter the cone, and not alarm for my jig. There are 3 sensitivity settings, and each is further adjusted by the gain setting.

Hope this helps someone. For the money some of these garmins  are going for it is my humble opinion that they are unbeatable.

[RapShack]

I'm with you Cal I love my Striker.  But a question regarding the "ClearVu" feature for anyone that might know, does it work with the ice ducer?  They've added it to the Striker 4 and I might be tempted to sell mine and upgrade but not if it means I need to buy another transducer.