The Captain’s spearo, Paul Miller, takes the new Lowrance Elite-7 Ti for a test drive.
I might spend more time underwater than actually in my boat, but having a good sounder and GPS is vital for spearing success. I’d been dying
to drop a new Lowrance onto the dash of my Gemini 5.5m RIB for quite a while now, so when The Captain rocked up on my doorstep with an Elite-7 Ti tucked under his arm, I was understandably excited.
I’d actually read up quite a bit about the Elite Ti Series. By the sounds of things, they punched well above their weight for a mid-range unit. With features such as a high-res touchscreen display, CHIRP Sonar, DownScan Imaging and StructureScan – as well as a chart-plotter with a built–in GPS antenna and wireless connectivity for GoFree – it was the perfect addition to my boat, provided I could install it correctly…
If you’re persuasive like me and your mates are easily bribed with beer, the Elite-7 Ti is an easy-peasy install. After two hours reading the instructions aloud, we were up and running. I spent the first afternoon sitting in the driveway familiarising myself with the unit and running through the basic features. Although there are a lot of functions, the Elite-7 Ti is intuitive and a breeze when it comes to customising pages to suit your use and fishing style.
On the water, the GPS is fast and pinpoint accurate. The seven-inch display has great colour contrast and awesome brightness even in direct sunlight. Target definition on StructureScan was insanely crisp and clear, too. We could even zoom in on marks and identify the species of fish we were looking at! The Elite-7 Ti also features TrackBack – by no means a new innovation from Lowrance, but still invaluable. It allows you to scroll back in time, view and even mark historical locations with a waypoint.
Back at the ramp, we ran into a very enthusiastic kayak fisho. He informed us that he’d just installed the Elite-7’s little brother, the Elite-5, into his pedal-powered pride and joy. When I told him I had the bigger unit, he leapt onto the boat without hesitation and gave me some lessons on reducing surface clutter. He then went into detail about the benefits of the GoFree Controller App, which lets you view and control your unit from an iPad. Cool, eh?
Since then, I’ve spent heaps of time on the water (and in the driveway) with the Elite-7 Ti. It’s crisp, intuitive and has much of the same technology that’s inside the larger and more powerful HDS units. The versatile Elite Ti Series will suit anything from inshore to offshore fishing.
Starting from: $849
More information: www.lowrance.com
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