Chirp

Talked to several guys yesterday...
The basic opinion was this: chirp is worthless for most of us around here ... Unless it's 100foot or deeper than its not worth having...
However I see people trying to decide what units to get every day and chirp is always a huge issue to them...

The new gen 3 Lowrance units have wifi... Not bringing my laptop out on the water
They have chirp ... Is it anything to use in Texas lakes
And a little better clarity?
Anything i am missing?
Is chirp anything to get excited about...
If that's all the gen 3 has over gen 2 I'm for sure not getting one...
What say y'all?

I may be wrong but I would say Chirp is an industry wide feature that's commonly used on most if not all graphs now so it's not something you are going to really be able to get away from. Some may be better than others and you should be able to read up on their specs for differences better or worse. The more different signals and the faster it sends these signals lends to a cleaner picture. Think of traditional sonar as a drum beat and think of Chirp as a drum roll as a signal being transmitted through the water.

Chirp really wasn't the deciding factor in picking a particular brand for me as was DI, SI and funtionality. Since purchasing my first units back in the summer I can now say that I think sonar is just as important as DI and SI. It can tell me the species of fish, how big the fish may be, how the fish are setup and how the are reacting to their environment. I also like it better for determining lake bottom conditions.

There's not much difference between the Lowrance Gen 3's and Gen 2's at all. Look up Russell Marine on YouTube and he gives a comparison. Keep in mind this was previous to the 3D feature by Lowrance. If that's something you plan on using then you may lean towards Gen 3. At this time this feature will not work on Gen 2's a may never will. I've seen some pretty sweet deals for Gen 2 touches on here and I run two 12's and absolutely love them. I'd post the link but I'm on my IPhone and it does weird things.

I'd be more than happy to take you out and show you my graphs and what I've learned. Just let me know bud and hope this helped you some.

Chirp will give a bit better separation of targets & fish. I don't care about chirp or 3d so when the gen 2 prices were down I ordered anther 12. Got that baby for $1400 with free shipping and no salestax.


I was looking at my old boxes earlier and I saw the price that I paid for my gen1 7 bundle (with lss1 module & ducer). $1700 bucks for that combo and I don't think I could sell it for $500 now. It's pitiful how much we pay and what the graphs are worth in a few years.

An interesting feature on the Gen3 is the touch screen work with any kind of glove on. Apparently it senses pressure.

Can you say Television, I-Phone..all electronics in general? We often forget when the "latest & greatest" comes out that what we already have still does everything it did when it was purchased. "Electronic envy". :-)

You must've just bought Gen2, then......Lowrance comes out w/ new stuff too quick. Stuff you buy is obsolete in 6months.

I have CHIRP and I like it.

no I have a HDS 8 Gen 2 with LSS2 but was thinking about going with a 12 inch screen and moving the 8 to the front of the boat...
I was comparing the HDS12 gen2 to the HDS12 gen3 and since I only need the head unit... I can get a touch 12 gen 2 for around 1400 bucks... a gen 3 head unit is around 3100 bucks.. huge difference for just chirp the wifi and possibly a little more clarity... if it was double the clarity and a bunch of other stuff yeah I could see it being double the price... but everywhere I look I get conflicting opinions on things like chirp.. I understand all units from here on out will have it until something better comes out... but some say like above non chirp is like a drum beat and chirp is like a drum roll... but a ton of others say unless I am in 100 foot of water or more I wont see any noticeable difference in chirp in Texas lakes where 40-60 foot is the deepest.. at least in most lakes I fish. 3D in the future is cool but prob not something I would jump into for a few more generations.. I've seen videos and although it looks cool at first if you really look at it... the image quality at least from what I have seen isn't there yet.. 3d is a baby right now and few gens later will prob be awesome and that's when ill pull the trigger on that...
so in short I am comparing the gen2 to gen 3 12 inch head units ..and for 1700 buck difference I don't see that much pros to going gen 3... unless I am missing something

If you're buying new units get the newest models, you'll get more support for the product longer. That and you won't get buyers remorse when you see someone using the newer one doing something you can't do.

If you're not thinking of getting 3D anytime soon grab a Gen2 12. You'll love it and they are priced right right now. They may release 3D for Gen 2's at some point but who knows if or when. They are pushing it with Gen 3's for obvious reasons.

Sell your 8 and get two 12's.

Chirp is a better image than non chirp for Lowrance. Now I agree as far as the "true chirp" transducers such as the Airmar TM 150, that you won't really see any substantial improvement over the Lowrance transducer using chirp unless you are at greater depths than what I would typically use it for bass fishing. That is also what I was told by an Airmar rep.

I get buyers remorse when I have to pay double for something that I don't really care about. (Chirp, 3d) both graphs have the same length of warranty period of 2 years.


$1,400 - $1,600 vs. $3,200. Yep, this poor boy doesn't like the $3,200 option.

The CHIRP technology is really cool. I can say this because I have my HDS 12 right next to my older Lowrance at the helm (older HDS 8) and I can tell you the amount of bottom clarity is substantially different. There's no clutter on the bottom like the unit can't tell what it is like my dash installed older unit.

Also.... I think you're missing the point on the WiFi capability. When I go home, the unit jumps online and does the software updates that used to be such a beating with the Gen 2 units. You had to copy the file off of the net onto the SD card and try to get the right ones copied, unzipped, and installed into the unit by going through the various menus. Now you just answer the prompt when it asks if you want the newest software update. Easy, peasy. Any problem that arises in the future are always greeted with the same question from Lowrance..... "Do you have the latest software installed?"

The buttons are now back on the Gen 3 and when I'm zipping across the lake on pad and hitting waves, the last thing I want to do is operate the touch screen. The buttons are way better in that regard.

Pinch in and pinch out (multi-touch) is also on the Gen 3 models which is cool, but still not as fast as it needs to be. Don't expect the speed of your phone or tablet screen but it's useful.

Yes, some gloves work, some don't.

Now the big question we all need to answer is what is all of that worth? I think it's only a question you can answer. I like the Gen 3 and once I see someone successfully implementing the 3D technology I might consider it but I don't see the value in that currently.

Hope this helps,

Jackson