Lowrance HDS 5

The Lowrance HDS 5 is both a fish finder and a GPS chart plotter. It has a 5 inch screen. It can be used as a stand alone or can be connected to a network. It is considered best in its class in both functionality and performance. Although it is just a five inch screen it has a resolution of 5”/12.7cm and 16 bit color Solar Max Plus daylight display. It has an adjustable screen with keypad back lighting. There is an ultra-precision 16 channel GPS plus WAAS(non-Americas) antenna inside. Also included is a broadband high definition sounder.

This is a favorite among fisherman because it can be customized with several different options. There are different mapping options. You can have lifelike Insight Lake maps or Nautic Insight mapping. Also available is the Navionics World Background maps. It has the largest selection pf chartcards including Navioncs Platinum Plus with Turbo views. It also has the capabilities of Sirius satellite weather and stereo-quality radio. Also available is Ethernetworks and NMEA networking options.

What exactly is a high definition system? It is an exclusive package of digital technology which includes a broadband sounder. The HDS sonar is proven to find more fish with greater sensitivity, more clarity and higher definition. It has superior target separation in all water conditions.

With Lowrance Broadband digital signal processing software, sensitivity goes up and noise reduction goes down. There is a distinct separation of structures from fish which is not always available. With advanced digital filtering, there are sharper bottom images. Clarity is vastly improved by the broadband capabilities. Hence, there is a much clearer picture of targets that other systems totally miss. You get a 120 degrees of wide-angle coverage. More water is covered because broadband adds 83kHz operations to a Lowrance 200kHz single frequency transducer. Hence, it targets an enhanced version of the fish arch.

There are even more incredible results in deep water fishing because of the advanced electronic capabilities is the broadband system. Even at high boat speed in deep water conditions broadband has exceptional targeting of a fish arch on the bottom. There is increased clarity around wrecks and other seabed structures. When used with a high powered transducer it can reach down thousands of feet.

At no extra cost the HDS Broadband equipped models can turn an HDS GPS chartplotter into a power combination fishfinder/chartplotter . When added to the Lowrance network it demonstrates amazing sonar control. The high definition Insight Charting reaches a new level of detail and resolution. It provides amazing contour shading which lends a life-life perspective to bottom structures and topography.

Included in the HDS 5 is the Lake Insight component. It has the capability of inland mapping which includes the Great Lakes and 5,000 other fresh water lakes and 500 fishing hot spots. Also in the HDS 5 is the new Nautic Insight. This offers a superior life-like view of coastal bottom structures. It displays detailed coastal and off-shore depth contours for the entire U.S. coast line.