Which Map Card for Lowrance HDS Units

I’m looking at map chips for Lowrance HDS and there are too many options. For those of you that use Lowrance which map card is the most useful? Mainly fishing WI, MN, and the U.P., most important features to my are accuracy of contours and the ability to offset for water depth. I know a lot of this depends on the quality of mapping for the lakes I fish, but is one much better than the other? Also which card tends to have the most detailed mapping of more lakes?

Navionics

Depends on the lakes you fish. Some are right on with one chip and way off on another. I have Navionics and Lowrance. I’m thinking of checking out the C- Maps chip. Lowrance is doing the same thing Humminbird did with Lakemaster. The C- Map chips have a lot of nice features.

navionics.

Agree with CF. Best to get them all.

I got navionics when I first purchased my hds units in 2014. The first chance to use it was on Rush Lake north of Cambridge and it was useless because I wanted to troll the shoreline weed edge and the maps had no contours within 100’ of shore. I didn’t use it much after that so I sold it. I went with the Insights chip and am fairly satisfied. I have noticed the accuracy isn’t what I’d hoped but at least it showed contours all the way to the shore.

I will say though I wish I still had my navionics chip in addition to my current chip. There are a few lakes I fish where it had more resolution and accuracy for that matter.

I run both, the Lowrance Lake Insight HD has the same information on surveyed maps as the old Lakemaster. For instance, the Sliver Flat on Mille Lacs is round on my Navionic’s however the Lake Insight HD shows it narrow and longer, like it really is. When fishing any lakes that have 1 foot contours, hands down to the Lake Insight HD for accuracy. On the other had, I fish Lac Seul and the Navionics chip works great there. Although it is not depth accurate, it is land/water accurate. Sometimes the Navionic’s chip might have a lake that is not on the Insight chip, something is always better than nothing.

I would say my response to the question of “which chip for my HDS unit?” depends on which HDS unit you have. Do you have a Gen3 or newer? If so, Navionics hands down because you can create your own maps on the fly with SonarChartLive. The key with Navionics is that its not a plug and play chip, once you purchase it you will need to download “freshest data” and then you are all set. You select a region and it downloads all the detail to your chip. You can also upgrade old chips as well during the year of subscription that you get when purchasing a new chip (disclaimer, I read this online, but have not done it myself).
If its an older unit, then I do like the Lowrance/CMap Insight chips, prefer the Pro myself because the HD doesn’t give you much over the Pro for the price and smaller screens don’t display it well anyway (under 7″).

CaptainMusky wrote:

I would say my response to the question of “which chip for my HDS unit?” depends on which HDS unit you have. Do you have a Gen3 or newer? If so, Navionics hands down because you can create your own maps on the fly with SonarChartLive. The key with Navionics is that its not a plug and play chip, once you purchase it you will need to download “freshest data” and then you are all set. You select a region and it downloads all the detail to your chip. You can also upgrade old chips as well during the year of subscription that you get when purchasing a new chip (disclaimer, I read this online, but have not done it myself).
If its an older unit, then I do like the Lowrance/CMap Insight chips, prefer the Pro myself because the HD doesn’t give you much over the Pro for the price and smaller screens don’t display it well anyway (under 7″).

a would also turn on fish n chip or sonarcharts layer as well otherwise your still looking at old data.

David Anderson wrote:

I run both, the Lowrance Lake Insight HD has the same information on surveyed maps as the old Lakemaster. For instance, the Sliver Flat on Mille Lacs is round on my Navionic’s however the Lake Insight HD shows it narrow and longer, like it really is. When fishing any lakes that have 1 foot contours, hands down to the Lake Insight HD for accuracy. On the other had, I fish Lac Seul and the Navionics chip works great there. Although it is not depth accurate, it is land/water accurate. Sometimes the Navionic’s chip might have a lake that is not on the Insight chip, something is always better than nothing.

Do an update if you have a Canadian Navionics chip. I did a massive amount of logging while i was up there for a week. I just verified my logs are good and had a weeks worth of logging. mostly the east side of the lake all the way around the big island. All new stuff showed up on the Navionics web app already.

Chris Messerschmidt wrote:

Do an update if you have a Canadian Navionics chip. I did a massive amount of logging while i was up there for a week. I just verified my logs are good and had a weeks worth of logging. mostly the east side of the lake all the way around the big island. All new stuff showed up on the Navionics web app already.

You must connect a tablet or phone via wifi to your HDS? Curious to hear what you have setup for that.
I haven’t promoted anything to the Community Edits for the things I have mapped, just stored on my HDS.

Chris Messerschmidt wrote:

a would also turn on fish n chip or sonarcharts layer as well otherwise your still looking at old data.

Correct, forgot the most important part. LOL

CaptainMusky wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Chris Messerschmidt wrote:</div>
Do an update if you have a Canadian Navionics chip. I did a massive amount of logging while i was up there for a week. I just verified my logs are good and had a weeks worth of logging. mostly the east side of the lake all the way around the big island. All new stuff showed up on the Navionics web app already.

You must connect a tablet or phone via wifi to your HDS? Curious to hear what you have setup for that.
I haven’t promoted anything to the Community Edits for the things I have mapped, just stored on my HDS.

i just turn my wifi on in my hds 12 and I connect with an iPhone 7 plus. I keep my phone plugged into power as it will drain the battery pretty quick. It draws the new contours out on my mobile app and my hds 12 as well. It sends those logs to Navionics. After about a week i can update my chip and those new contours show up on my graphs without having to have sonarcharts running. I can post directions if needed step by step on doing this?

I don’t pay much attention to my phone once its connected and I am on the water. It basically is a means up pushing data to Navionics. It doesn’t fully push the data till I connect to a wireless signal with internet.

I push all of my logs to them. I keep waypoints and stuff to myself but logs go. I don’t like hearing people say the mapping isn’t that good or stuff like that. So I am doing my part for them to make there maps even better. My Point 1 is right over my transducer so my stuff is pretty accurate that I send.

Thanks for the info! So, the only way it will update the chart on the app is if you have it connected at the time you are creating the maps correct? Example, I was in Canada roughly a month ago and mapped a ton of spots, but did not connect to my phone. I can view those SonarChartsLive using the overlay. If I connect my phone NOW, those will not be updated to the app correct?
I didn’t want to have my phone on in Canada roaming the whole time. I guess I could have just turned wifi on and in airplane mode, but I was focused more on fishing.