I have the hot maps premium and went fishing this weekend with a friend that has a Helix 10 with the smartstrike chip. He was showing me some pretty cool stuff with it. My question is how many people are using this and does it have same maps etc but with more detail. Just trying to get some REAL info without calling Humminbird. Do you like it?

No one has used it?

You may want to post your question on the Humminbird forum on Bass Boat Central. They're almost sure to have an opinion.

I have not used the Smartstrike card, and as stated above you may want to check it out on BBC as they have a wider demographic than here on TFF but I can say if you are going to compare best mapping out there, using the Navionics premium card is not the best mapping offered from Navionics to get a good comparison. To compare the best mapping from Navionics to the SmartStrike card, see the Navionics Webapp, then check the lakes you fish a decide for yourself before spending any money.

I have both and use both. depends on lake but the smartstrike can really help fish a new lake. just about every lake I have fished navionics seems to be more detailed. The smartsrike is the same as the lakemsater, has all the features the lakemaster does. It also has a different lake list as well. It is nothing magic other than the fact it is programmed to show where a certain species of fish may be during a certain time of year and day. It can really reduce the time of going over a map. I did find one trick with the smartstrike is that you can put in all the info, then after it highlights the areas you can switch to the navionics card and the areas will be highlighted on the navionics as well. This is with a helix 12 unit