Your thoughts on a Helix?

[Jim Panfish Uran]

You can get a Helix-5 for the ice at a very reasonable price, what are your thoughts on the GPS portion of it? You can set your map to color in different depths, depths that you want to key in on, plus it's built right into your flasher so you will never leave it at home lol.  

[rundrave]

so my initial thoughts on the helix, is gps is fantastic, you can highlight certain depts on map that you want to fish and it highlights it for you takes all the guess work out etc as you mentioned.

has  zoom  features on flasher mode

it has a fish alarm which seemed pretty accurate, i adjusted the sensitivity accordingly

battery life was great, screen brightness can be adjusted, I need to learn how to read the 2 dimension mode better

DI is worthless on the ice lol

probably going to get the ice ducer to make run an gun easier, i rigged up my own soft pack for it with a soft side cooler

 

bottom line is i love this unit. I have the navionics app on my phone and it has its benefits but its a huge battery drain on my phone. I love not having to dig phone out of pocket etc now.
 

so far nothing has made me miss my marcum. I will say the marcum is simple to use, and the helix takes a little bit of time to set up and get familiar with but its simply because it has so many more features and settings etc.

Edited January 6, 2017 by rundrave

[knoppers]

I have the helix 5 on my pontoon and really like this unit. for the price, its loaded with features.

[Jim Panfish Uran]

How hard is it to find a used chip for this unit? lol I've got some older ones that fit in my Lowrance, I suppose this would take a micro chip? 

[knoppers]

it does take a micro chip, I haven't tried to look for one, so not sure about any used one's out there.

[Jim Panfish Uran]

A buck and a quarter for a chip is steep but you get what you pay for and that's a lot of great info that's programmed in.  Did the mapping weigh into your buying this unit? 

[knoppers]

not at all, I am on a 300 acre lake, I use the GPS mostly for trolling speed on my pontoon. but I did like that option in case I go to other lakes nearby. I have the lowrance chip and a navoinics chip in my boat, they both would not work in the helix. 125 does seem a bit high, but anything good costs you.

[1Yogi]

I own a 5 DI-GPS and used it on my boat all summer. Love it I mean love it. As an added bonus Humminbird Tech Support and Customer Service is top flight, at least in my experience. Just finished getting it rigged for Ice Fishing will let you know how I like it for that.