[FISH11]

I've have several friends that bought the HOOK series and all have problems. What I've seen is even thought Lowrance claims it's very user friendly, my opinion is the HOOK series SUCKS. I have owned the Elite TI for over 4 year. First I bought the 5" TI and had it for 6 months, but the touch screen was having problem, so I returned it to West Marine and used the extended warranty I purchased to get my money back and buy the 7" TI. I did not want the Total scan (side scan), because I did not want that very large transducer protruding down below my Hobie Revo 13 hull. So I purchased the model with the down scan transducer. It has 83/200 and 400/800 frequencies. I love how it works and now the newer model is the TI2. Asides from it having wi-fi network, I am not sure of any other improvements. I would recommend the Elite TI2 or the HDS models. The thing is, that means the price range is above $500 to $1200. Regardless of the brand I don't think there is a Fish Finder with GPS, that is worth it unless you spend more than $500. I used to own several Elite 4 models with GPS and they were awesome, but no one make anything decent for under $500. My old (over 7 years old) HDS5 50/200 that I still have on my Malibu kayak is still better than anything cheap. If you are going to fish mostly Saltwater don't get side scan. Even down scan is only good under 120' in depth. In fresh water lakes it's a different ball game the scans are much more detailed over the sonar frequencies. Hope it helps.