2 Comments

1. JA Christianson

   May 21, 2015

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   3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

   
   I am very pleased with the unit, May 14, 2015

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   JA Christianson –

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   This review is from: Humminbird 409620-1 HELIX 5 DI Fish Finder with Down-Imaging and GPS (Electronics)

   This is the first fish finder I ever purchased that exceeded my expectations. I previously used a Hummingbird 570DI that was similar, but gray scale and no GPS. This unit (Helix 5 DI) shows much more detail and the Down Imaging actually works. I tested it on the lake last week where the lake level is about 12 ft higher than the last time I was out. The timber where I previously fished for crappie was well out of sight and after traversing the area for about 10 minutes, I finally crossed over the sunken treetop, which showed up clearly on the screen, using the down imaging display. When centered over it, I pushed the “mark” button and it saved it on the GPS log. While out, I was able to find other submerged trees where I fished in the past and marked them as well. Then, using the GPS feature, I was able to quickly and accurately navigate back to the exact location of the submerged trees previously marked. Later I used the Fish Finder to try and locate schools of white bass, which I did. They showed up on the graph exactly as advertised. I verified the the fish, using a more expensive Lorrance unit I have on the front of the boat. The graphs were identical. Finally I tested it at high speed. Unlike my previous unit, it continued to sound the debth, even running full out. I am very pleased with the unit.

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2. Buy local

   May 21, 2015

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   21 of 24 people found the following review helpful

   
   Warning- stops reading water depth in water over 200 ft deep and quits marking fish, February 15, 2015

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   Buy local –

   Verified Purchase(What’s this?)

   This review is from: Humminbird 409620-1 HELIX 5 DI Fish Finder with Down-Imaging and GPS (Electronics)

   If I were you, I’d wait until the bugs are worked out before committing to this unit. Today was the first chance I have had to use my Helix 5 DI/GPS since I installed it. It started up and seemed to work ok for several hours. I tinkered with it for quite awhile to get it dialed in, but I was having a hard time getting it to mark fish since it was just marking my 3 downrigger balls with a solid line at 50-100 ft deep. I could get it to stop marking them by turning the sensitivity way down, but then it wouldnt show any potential fish marks really. After 5 hours the screen blanked out and started reading 0ft depths. I thought maybe the transducer wiggled loose or had a short in the wire. After wiggling stuff around to try to get it working for a long while, we figured out that it might just have been too deep. It turned out that it just would lose the bottom between 200-300 feet of water. When we would move to water less than 200 ft deep it seemed to work fine (minus the sensitivity issues I mentioned), but in water over 200, the readings became intermittent, and over 300ft, it just wouldnt work at all. I just emailed the manufacturer, and so I have yet to see what their diagnoses is, but if it cant be fixed, it is going back. It is rated to read the bottom in 600ft of water, and although losing the bottom is not that big of deal at those depths, but not marking fish in the top 50-100 ft of water when fishing deep waters is a problem. Hope this helps someone else.

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