Welcome to the club. Everyone is wondering the same thing.Hit any list, and all the graph traffic revolves around Lowrance service issues. The Lowrance HDS, IMHO, is a better graph. But, I’m not sure it’s ready to take the on the water beating it was designed for. Personally, I’ve been running Lowrance units since the late 70’s, and have never had one issue with Lowrance, including a HDS 5 in the dash of my current P Classic. The technology of the Lowrance units though, has seemed to have out raced its implementation. They both are after all, computers, and computers break easily.The main issue seems to be a timely repair or replacement from Lowrance. I’ve held off on the same purchase as you, hoping this will all play out, but there’s no way to find out the actual repair percentages of units sold for either unit.$3000 is a lot of money to roll the dice on. If I could be sure that the Lowrance units were solid, and the issues people are reporting, were just an inter-web feeding frenzy, then I would probably go with Lowrance. If I wanted a second generation unit that I felt would give me better reliability, then I would go with the Hummingbird in a heartbeat.Red pill or blue pill, it’s ultimately up to you as to which graph gives you the picture and feature set you like best. They’re both fine units.
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