Does anyone use a HELIX and how good or bad are the Basemaps? I don't like the idea of buying a different chip for every region.

I'm very interested in the answer to this question.

You might get some more responses in the Fishing subforum. BTW, those Helix units use a lot of power. I think their 5" basic unit draws 0.6A and a lot of them sit around 0.8A. With a 10Ah Li-ion battery you could get maybe 12-15 hours, whereas with some of the older monochrome units that draw ~0.1A, you can get like 80-100 hours of runtime. If you'll be on a motorboat with big batteries, no problem, but otherwise you'll need a solar charger for the Li-ion battery, or if you're going to do a AA battery pack, you'll need....... a LOT of AAs.

I have been looking at Garmin's echoMAP series and theirs draw less current, from 0.4A to 0.6A based on the screen size and features. Their maps seem to be reduced - they have like a US HD, Canada HD, or US/CAN G3 (better versions?), and then N.American coastal waters (BlueMap?). Unfortunately you can't use maps from their GPSmap series, you have to buy the specific echoMAP maps.

Are you asking about base lake depth maps or base aerial imagery for land? I have a Helix 7 with lakemaster chips, never even tried looking at any base maps before putting chip in. HD maps are great.

flynn: "You might get some more responses in the Fishing subforum. BTW, those Helix units use a lot of power. I think their 5" basic unit draws 0.6A and a lot of them sit around 0.8A. With a 10Ah Li-ion battery you could get maybe 12-15 hours, whereas with some of the older monochrome units that draw ~0.1A, you can get like 80-100 hours of runtime. If you'll be on a motorboat with big batteries, no problem, but otherwise you'll need a solar charger for the Li-ion battery, or if you're going to do a AA battery pack, you'll need....... a LOT of AAs.

I have been looking at Garmin's echoMAP series and theirs draw less current, from 0.4A to 0.6A based on the screen size and features. Their maps seem to be reduced - they have like a US HD, Canada HD, or US/CAN G3 (better versions?), and then N.American coastal waters (BlueMap?). Unfortunately you can't use maps from their GPSmap series, you have to buy the specific echoMAP maps."

Great insight as I would not have considered Amp usage verses longevity of my batteries. I guess that makes my current monochromes not half bad.

Hijacking my own thread...on the other hand my understanding is that LOWRANCE uses a system that allows you to use a few different free map sets. If someone knows better please say so.