Humminbird 410230-1 HELIX 5 CHIRP SI GPS G2 Fish Finder, Black

This Hummingbird is very good. Yes, a few extra dollars for a small boat sounder/gps, but do not frustrate yourself with a cheaper unit. I did that. Spent a whopping $300 on a Lowrance thinking it would be good enough and I was very wrong. Hair pulling experience. Fortunately Amazon took it back, I wised up and bought this excellent user friendly Hummingbird. This unit made for electronics dummies, but yet sophisticated. I have a 14' skiff and works great. Suggest kayaks or any smaller boat would work fine. Nothing to do. Turn it on, sounder works right away. No studying for a hour to figure out how to use it. Same with the built in GPS map. Picked up my location/map instantly. What a relief! Do not fear this unit. Buy it!

Met and exceeded my expectations. Have this on a detachable mount on my kayak I use for mostly nearshore ocean fishing >75 ft most of the time.

First of all, I would recommend Humminbird for anyone who isn’t a complete rookie. If you are a rookie, Garmin might be best. But Humminbird by far has the best customization and tweaking of settings to suit your preferences once you know what you’re doing.Overall I’m happy with the Helix 5 SI CHIRP GPS G2. Initially I bought the Helix 5 with down imaging and was dissaponted to find out that it lacked side imaging and also had a very narrow 2D sonar beam (200 Hz frequency which had around 20 degree beam). That means it only covers an area on bottom 1/3 the distance of your depth. Useless. So that’s why I got the SI. It has a 83 Hz beam which covers an area on bottom EQUAL to your depth. In other words, at 20 feet depth it would cover 20 feet from side to side on bottom.The screen is very bright. This is good because in sunny days you won’t see a dim screen. The power drain is around 650 mA/h which would give you roughly 10 hours using a 7 amp battery (12 volt obviously).Cable for transducer is plenty long. Probably 15 feet. But the cable to battery is very short. Most likely you’ll need to extend the wires to reach your power source. I called Humminbird and they use 18 gauge wires, so you’d want to use 16 gauge extension wire (never go smaller on size so that you don’t increase resistance).My only complaint with the Helix 5 is the side imaging is mostly useless. After 3 trips I’ve realized I’m not going to use it. The detail is pretty bad and the small screen makes it even harder to see. Maybe if you get a larger screen and get the new MEGA side imaging it might be worth it. But I stick to just 2D, DI, and GPS map views.The GPS seems pretty accurate. It comes with built in base maps which I guess can get the job done but the topo lines are really general and don’t show detailed drop offs. You can go to ChartSelect on Humminbird website to download LakeMaster maps individually per body of water . I’m very satisfied with these. They have 2 small lakes in my area in the database.I get great fish arches with the 2D. I also like how you can choose between two modes of sensitivity (Clear vs Max). Another way to quickly adjust sensitivity is by pressing the +/- buttons. Very convenient on the fly without having to go through menu buttons.If I lost this or had it stolen, I would definitely buy again.

Liked: The Helix 5 CHIRP SI GPS G2 was a great portable unit with lots of capability showing and recording depth and contours on Northern Canadian Lakes that had no existing contour maps. The GPS map actually allowed me to eliminate the use of my Garmin handheld units that I had been using for years marking dangerous slightly submerged rocks by transferring data points. I was able to map out some nice humps and holes that assisted in catching many trophy Lake Trout. The side-imaging was interesting in ice-out bays fishing for trophy pike as you could see the rock and shore breaks and several large fish. However, at ice-out on a sunny day, you can actually stand up in the boat and spot these trophy pike easier than using the side imaging. I primarily used a side by side 30% depth 70% GPS screen when mapping. When mapping you also need to purchase the Zero Line Mapping Micro SD Card for about $100 to provide you shorelines and the ability to store the contours as you move about the lake. I had read that you can only get about 8 hours of contours on the microSD card and then copy to a computer and clear the card. However, I was able to get 16 hours/day x 6 days fishing on the card so not sure of the actual capacity. The process is not clear with Humminbird.Disliked: Humminbird and their support. There was a $50 rebate for the purchase of my unit if purchased before May 31, 2019 and submitted before June 30. I filled out their on-line form 4X and had it rejected each time for invalid SN. I used their on-line chat 4X and they were idiots and could not help and suggested that each time I submit rebate again with pdf copy of receipt, and pictures of the SN on the unit and on the box. It still got rejected each time. I then tried their phone number where on-line it says customer service reps are standing by to help and all the prompts create an endless loop where you can't get a live body to fix the issue. Finally, a guy on the on-line chat line said just keep hitting "3" and you will eventually get someone and I eventually did. Of course, the guy said you have an invalid SN and I explained everything again and he said he would handle it personally. I just got back from my two week Canadian fishing trip and checked the status of my rebate and it says there is a problem. Humminbird support is terrible! Finally, I'd love to be able to take the microSD cards and see/map my contours on my computer, but I guess that's another $200 expense for Humminbird PC that doesn't work with my Mac's and get's poor reviews from the few users I can find.

This product is produced for both the US and international market. All units made for the US market are in english units only (feet, fathoms, miles, nautical miles, Fahrenheit) where as those made for the international market include metric units (kilometers, meters, Celsius). The one I bought, although it is work fine, was not an international unit. Given that Amazon.ca is selling a product to Canadian buyers, they should be disclosing this information prior to purchase. In my case, I did not discover this until I installed the depth sounder on my boat and powered it up.Cheers,Doug

Bought fish finder to install on a Old Town Sportsman 120 PDL. Unit works as expected, though I was almost tempted to have bought the Helix 7 for a little larger screen.The down imaging and side imaging are handy to have to locate underwater structure, especially when floating in dirty or muddy water.Would be nicer to have better GPS mapping as it is pretty basic (it does have my local Canadian basic mapping)The measurement units on the item are imperial, and I haven't found any way yet (if possible) to change to metric.

Works well, still learning. They do need to offer a model specific users manual instead of the generic one that covers all models in a series

la pêche

Great unit everything works well but the pre loaded maps suck, gota get a lakemaster chip if you’d like to scout the lake abit before you get there