Lowrance

[SkunkBoat]

Since Lowrance was bought by Navico seems they just don't quite have their ship together...

[THEFERMANATOR]

My 1st experience with lowrance was back when navico 1st bought them. I had an lmf-200 with the ep-10 to monitor fuel usage on my hydra-sports. Had nothing but problems with the fuel flow senso, after the 3rd one went out in just a few months, they refused to warranty it anymore. Gave up on it, and boe swapped me out for a northstar unit. My new boat has a lowrance chartplotter on it that does nmea2000, but unfortunately it doesnt do the engine readouts, so I'm looking at an lmf-200 and an ep-20 engine interface, then I can hook the chartplotter into it and have a gauge to tell me oil pressure, engine temp, hour meter, voltage, fuel flow, instant econ, and some more. What a shock when I checked the prices. I bought the lmf WITH the ep-10 flow sensor for $200, they no longer sell it as a combo. The lmf200 is $170, the flow sensor is $200, and the nmea2000 starter kit is $63. So its now $433 for what I bought not that long ago for $200 because navico jacked the prices up. It's going to cost me around $330 to hook it up to the engine so I can monitor it. Thats not chump change by a long shot because navico jacked the prices up.

[phatdaddy]

My take is what do you want it to do best. With a combo unit you can't get both to be great. I think garmin has the best gps, easy to use, very intuitive to use, but hard to get it to "talk" to other machines. Furuno has the best bottom machine, but u need a masters degree to work the gps and the base maps are a joke.