flasher brands

[frosted]

I know there's a lot of posts about flashers, but never having owned or used one, it's a little over whelming.. just wondering what brands people like.. looking at different models of hummingbirds, Marcum, and vexilar. What brands seem to have the least amount of problems and are most reliable. Thanks

[3300]

w/o owning one, vex sounds like it has the least troubles. they are a very "simple" unit, so not much can go wrong with them. they are analog units.

digital units offer the most options and have razor thin lines for marking jigs/fish. that is important when using zoom. the thicker the normal line, the worse it will be when you zoom in on it. also no moving parts or hubs or motors or flashing lights on digitals. you can have it display graph and or vertical column and zoom or all three at one time. so the display option are configurable unlike analog units.

they all mark fish and any thing is better than nothing.

[ducati]

Vex's are built like an anvil, nothing is tougher or more reliable in my opinion.  With that said I will never buy another one after using a graph.  If you are dead set on a flasher I would go with the Marcum vx1 or the Bird Ice35, both will do everything that a Vex Fl18 or Fl20 will do for in the neighborhood of a $100 less.

[Chris338378]

I was in your boat three years ago and after just about driving myself insane with researching I chose to go with Marcum because they had more peak to peak power and were more reasonably priced.  Every year you see guys posting about how they have problems with something but I take that with a grain of salt.  After all if 20 people have problems how many other's don't?  All of these companies make hundreds if not thousands of machines every year so in reality the complaints aren't as common as you might think when you look at the big picture.  In the end it basically comes down to a Ford, Chevy, Dodge thing.  Personally I like Marcum because of their prices and whenever I called their customer service with a question they were very nice and answered all my questions.

[Mr.Harry]

I just got into the ice sonar game too and ended up buying a marcum 2beam showdown over the dial flashers because it was in the same price range as mid to high level dial flasher but I prefered the display. Very happy so far. I'll likely never buy an analog dial unit now. BUT to answer your question very specifically - which brand of dial flasher is most reliable/trouble free, i alot of research and the answer is Vexillar. Something like a 99.6 % success rate for their products meaning it's only a tiny,tiny fraction of units that go out to the customer faulty, malfunction or need to go back to the manufacturer for repair. That's definitely something worth noting. Put another way, if Vex MADE a product like the marcum I bought, I probably would have gone with the vex version.

[Smelty88]

I love my showdown!

I just got into the ice sonar game too and ended up buying a marcum 2beam showdown over the dial flashers because it was in the same price range as mid to high level dial flasher but I prefered the display. Very happy so far. I'll likely never buy an analog dial unit now. BUT to answer your question very specifically - which brand of dial flasher is most reliable/trouble free, i alot of research and the answer is Vexillar. Something like a 99.6 % success rate for their products meaning it's only a tiny,tiny fraction of units that go out to the customer faulty, malfunction or need to go back to the manufacturer for repair. That's definitely something worth noting. Put another way, if Vex MADE a product like the marcum I bought, I probably would have gone with the vex version.

[Chris338378]

I forgot to mention I also bought the Showdown Dual Beam and am completely happy with it.

[frosted]

thanks a lot everyone, really helps.