ps - dont need touch screen, and dont need chart

I run a lowrance hds7 gen2 with a tm260 and only been to 430 meters so far and still learning the settings for that depth it's ok but I've seen what a 295 with a 2kw can do and for the size of boat you have why not go for it, at least you won't have to upgrade again.
Good luck with your choice

I hear they were getting good bottom reads using a Garmin and chirp.  BME have a 9" fishfinder pretty cheap.

The best transducer you can easily put on the transom for deep water is a 1kW chirp transducer - either the TM265 or TM275. The 1kW Chirp transducers are simply better than the non chirp equivalent (TM260) - they use later technology to give a clearer picture with less ringing and can be driven "harder".

You can then hook it up to a number of different sounders - any current Garmin GPSMAP product, Furuno FCV295 or DFF3, Simrad NSS evo3 or BSM3. Each have their good points.

1kW chirp should get you fishing in 500M - but results at anything above drifting depend greatly on engine noise, transducer installation, user skill etc.

The 9" model earlier mentioned is an echomap product, and unfortunately can't drive a 1kW transducer

Hi Rob / Bay Marine

We haven't officially been given any pricing, but I see on the garmin.co.nz website they are listed at $2199. A loose ETA we have is about March.

The sounder specs appear to be the exactly same as the 751xs - which we found gave really good performance - are you struggling with yours?

There was a bit of confusion about the power output of that range of sounders - at one stage the output of the 820xs was listed at 1kW chirp in NZ and 600W chirp in the UK. I believe the 751xs had the same sounder in it. We've got shots of the 820xs in 850M plus but I don't think we have any of the 751xs.

I would doubt there would be a great increase in the performance between sounders with any transducer, but yeah even more so with a 600W chirp.

We normally recommend the 23 for fishing in 150M - I would expect them to work a bit better on the drift than loose the bottom at 250. At speed there is so many variables I couldn't say.

Hi..i am a new user here. I am learning the settings for that depth it's ok but I've seen what a 295 with a 2kw can do and for the size of boat you have why not go for it.