IceShanty.com's Ice Fishing Community
Ice Fishing Tips -Check your local regulations! => Equipment => Topic started by: cdwester on Jan 12, 2021, 01:27 PM
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Vexilar........Marcum. .....Humminbird......L owrance......Garmin... ..?
Used a few brands/models (currently have ProView) and it's really hard to compare them because of the different cone angles, displays, software, ect. You would think the transducer would be the most important part of a sonar but it usually takes a back seat.
Want to know from the guys that have fished different units, which company makes the best transducer and which one of those you prefer?
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You're just going to get a lot of responses saying "Garmin Panoptix Livescope".
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Years ago my brother worked for Bottom Line before Johnson(Humminbird) bought them up and so I asked him what he thought. Back when he was testing some of the units he said that the same ducer powered by different units some with more power than others worked better with the higher power units. Now this was all open water not ice. So when I got my Panoptix he was just blown away. The Panoptix ducers are, as I understand, an array of many ducers working to give the detail and huge area of coverage. I have not personally tried the Liveview and just have the PS22 on mine. Probably not fair to compare the Panoptix array of ducers to regular ones that have just one or maybe two, wide and narrow. I know that Lowrance has its version but I don't have any personal experience with them. Again the same ducer hooked up to different power units will have slightly different results. They can program that difference out for what the Fisherman sees but at the electronic signal level underpowered units may not see all that higher power units do, especially at deeper ranges. Probably not a big concern if most of what you fish is less than 30', and that is the case with most ice fishing.