asking for depth finder recommendations

[keakar]

update: here is a little review of what happened and my views on it.

well I bought the helix DI GPS unit and its a 3"high x 5"wide screen so it looks like its half the size screen of the lowrance units.

the 5" wide screen is 1.5" of boxes for info displays so what you can see is only 3.5" wide x 3" high. the display boxes (while semi-transparent) cant really be seen through well enough unless your right on top of the unit.

the color display is easier to see then the gray scale but because this screen is much smaller then my old units 5"x5" screen, its extremely hard to see fish registering on it. it also fades out in direct sunlight like when you stand to the side of a computer monitor and it fades out, so I have to "shade" it with my hand to be able to see it better, plus the small 3" display (actual usable display) is so small you again need to be close to the unit to see much of anything other then very large objects.

overall its much worse to see stuff then what I was expecting but I suppose I could get used to it over time if I had to. that however wont be necessary because its already broken on the first trip.

after a few hours it starts turning itself off and once it starts it will only stay on for 5-30 seconds before it goes off again and at one point the screen display froze but the other things kept working like clock, speed, temp, and all that. its going back RMA tomorrow so im actually glad it broke because I was very unhappy with it mainly because I have bad eyes and would get headaches if I had to strain to look at the small screen all the time.

I ordered the lowrance 5x elite combo with gps for $399 with the larger 5"x5" screen as a replacement for the messed up helix.

overall I still think the helix is a nice unit and if I didn't have bad eyes it would be a good unit so I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars even though I had a bad one