# Lowrance Elite 7 HDI questions



## leeabu (Apr 10, 2004)

Fishing buddy asking about this unit. I have always had Humminbirds and cannot help him. Comes with the Lake Insight Pro chip and the Genesis chip. Looks like the unit only has one card slot though. Anyone with experience with this unit?


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## guppygill (May 8, 2004)

I have the Elite 5 HDI, used it this year, love it, great for the price. I think they are CHIRP now.


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## Draggin' Fish (Jul 10, 2007)

guppygill said:


> I have the Elite 5 HDI, used it this year, love it, great for the price. I think they are CHIRP now.


 I have elite 7. Very nice finder for the price. Sreen detail is excellent. No problems with mine so far.


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## Longhorn (Oct 26, 2014)

I have an Elite 7 HDI on my flats boat. I predominantly use it for the GPS and it has been great so far. I use a Navionics+ card for coastal detail. I didn't need the CHIRP for fly fishing the bays. I also run an Elite 5 DSI on my freshwater boat. Both are nice units.


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## Meerkat (Aug 10, 2008)

I suppose it depends on where you are going to use it but for Lake Erie, spend the extra money and get an HDS unit. I wish I had done that!

I have an HDS 5. Great unit. Could mark fish at 30 mph. But the screen was really small, especially with a split screen chartplotter/sonar. So I added an Elite 7 CHIRP as my fishfinder & kept the HDS5 as my chartplotter. 

Well no matter what I do I cannot get the unit to mark fish at any speed. I am beginning to think that the transducer is cavitating (it is much bigger than the HDS transducer). I am going to try going back to my HDS 5 trasducer.

And problems with marking at speed is probably compounded by the fact that you cannot set ping speed and scroll speed separately. All you get is ping speed. No scroll speed option.

And while it has all sorts of display options like "High CHIRP", "Medium CHIRP",
"High CHIRP/Medium CHIRP", "200 kHz", "83 kHz", "200 kHz/83 kHz", etc, when you set the sensitivity and color line on one of these options, it sets it for all of them. You cannot set them independently like you can on the HDS. 

Oh - and it died on me after 6 months and when I called Lowrance they tried to tell me it was not under warrantee as they had shipped it from their factory over a year ago (only has a 1 year warrantee). They relented when I produced the receipt but still...

So like I said at the beginning it depends on what you are going to use if for but for me on Lake Erie I wish I had spent the extra money on an HDS unit!


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## leeabu (Apr 10, 2004)

Meerkat said:


> I suppose it depends on where you are going to use it but for Lake Erie, spend the extra money and get an HDS unit. I wish I had done that!
> 
> I have an HDS 5. Great unit. Could mark fish at 30 mph. But the screen was really small, especially with a split screen chartplotter/sonar. So I added an Elite 7 CHIRP as my fishfinder & kept the HDS5 as my chartplotter.
> 
> ...




Unit to be front trolling motor mounted for inland lakes. It is the old HDI model not the new CHIRP model.


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## Meerkat (Aug 10, 2008)

I am not an expert but I have played with the CHIRP screens vs the regular 2D 200/83 khz & I dont see any significant improvement with CHIRP. Maybe I am missing something but both screens look the same to me.


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## Meerkat (Aug 10, 2008)

Oh & you should be fine with it mounted on your trolling motor since it works well at trolling speed.


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## jcoholich (Feb 12, 2014)

I run the hds gen 3s on my big boat and the elite series on my smaller lake boat. The hdi units are great. I would check to make sure the unit software is up to date in the unit this will prevent glitches when on the water... I do not know much about the lake insight chips I use the Navionics because of the freshest data... But if he does decide he wants the freshest data and sonarcharts with Navionics he can get the update chip and only pay 99 instead of having to buy the Navionics +


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