First, I dont own one (yet). But I have played with one quite a bit. The detail is beyond anything I would have imagined 5 years ago. We idled over a bridge and could see the steel latice clearly. The “shadows” bring out detail you would never be able to see with a normal image. There are quirks. dark band down the middle. You cant go too slow or the image looks odd. You cant mount a side-imaging transducer on the trolling motor. Had a friend that did this and it screwed things up pretty badly as it does not like to suddenly have its orientation changed with respect to the bottom, as the image disappears, etc… The main down-side I found was that we spent more time than we should have looking around, because we could see details that were never visible before. That rock is a washing machine. That lump on the bottom is an old automobile. That trestle was blown out, but look at those side rails and structure that is still there on the bottom of the gap… It is an eerie image when you first see it. Something tells me that one day that will be the way all depth finders display images, although there is still room for improvement in the software. It would be nice to be able to image at any speed, from nearly zero to something at least up in the 40-50mph range, but that is not possible yet. But Ill bet it will be before long. They are a bit pricey today, but then again I remember looking at a 52″ plasma TV 7-8 years ago selling for $16,999.00 at Tweeters. They are now down to 1/10th of that. All that said, I could still do just fine with an old neon-based flasher. I still use one in fact, for running at high speed. But the new side-scan finders are really pretty slick and will show you things you never knew were there. Whether that will translate into catching more fish or not is up to you…2008 Pantera Classic2014 Mercury Pro XS 200
.
