Honest feedback, who has it and do you like it? Im set up with all Humminbirds and have 360 currently. All I'd have to do is get the transducer and mount it. Still not sure I even want to but it would be the cheapest way for me to go if I decided to do it.

All the cool kids run garmin

I’d save my money and either get a Garmin or Lowrance. I love my Active Target. No less than a 12” screen for sure.

I have it but still in the early stages of learning it.I also have mega 360 and with those two you can pretty much know what is going on around you.
What has really helped me with the Mega Live is seeing what is out where I point it. I have it hooked up to a mega lock so I can turn my Ultrex without messing with the live scope.
It is not hard to pick up what is on the Mega Live, at least it is not for me, that part is fairly easy. I still cannot see my lure dancing across the screen, that I am trying to understand. Once you get a good school of fish it is pretty neat to see them swimming around down there.
It has cut down on fishing "dead water". BUT ... I have caught fish when the Mega Live has not shown them on my Mega Live. Why" I haven't a clue as of yet.
If you are wanting to catch more fish, the Mega Live will help you do that, it will not catch them for you but it will show you if they are there to be caught.

My buddies that have the Garmon FFS says it is much better than Mega Live, same goes with the Lowrance guys. I have no problem with the Mega live but to be honest here I cannot draw any type comparison to the other ones.
To me it might be, who like what bass boat and think this one or that was is the best one. It is all subjective to me.
I bought my Mega Live for $999 and my Mega Lock for $1499 and i have it hooked up to a Helix 9 G4, which I got the $500 rebate back on it.( Which I find is plenty large enough to see what is happening.) So I did save $1500 for the entire setup.
One other thing that I will say is if you go the route of getting the Mega Lock (which is super nice), you may want to look into upgrading your trolling motor gas cylinder. I have the Ultrex and after all was said and done, I went on and bought the new upgraded Ultrex bottom case that includes a new stronger gas cylinder that makes it as east to pull up and set down as nothing was added to the trolling motor. but that is an extra $400 if you buy it from Hodges Marine. Minn Kota, most others want $449 for it.
I get just a little feed back from my 360 but not enough to bother me any.

Long story short, it is expensive to add on if you go full blown like i did. But it always seems if I try to skimp buy, I always wished I would have went on and bought what I needed to begin with. It makes it much easier down the road.
I am a glutton for punishment here, I have close to $20,000 of electronics on my boat.

I've had both- started with Megalive and G4 Helix 12- took them off after fishing on a Garmin equipped boat and now have LVS34 and 12" Garmin. Garmin LVS34 is a much, much better product imho.

I have one. Set it up on it's own battery and it is just fine. Mine is plenty clean and crisp with no issues. It is all in the set up.

I'm in your exact situation. Basically, it's $1,500ish to get the MegaLive running through an existing compatible Humminbird unit (though it's on sale now, so even better deal), or $3,000ish to get a Garmin or Lowrance package rigged on front with a suitable screen size (some sales here and there so you can sometimes get it done $2,500ish), so I got MegaLive.

MegaLive is ok. I have used LVS34 and ActiveTarget 2 on other boats. They are both better than MegaLive in terms of target clarity and separation especially more than about 20-30 feet away from the boat. You can still see just about everything on MegaLive as you do on the other brands' latest models, but it's not as clear what you're looking at and you must focus more intently to understand what's going on (tracking your lure is more difficult, and differentiating a limb on a brush pile from a fish hovering next to it is not as clear). Target clarity 0-30 feet away is actually very good, so it's great for vertical fishing. Beyond that, clarity and separation decline quite a bit. MegaLive does a very good job of omitting clutter/artifacts from the screen too, so you do actually have a pretty clean background when it's properly tuned. For what it's worth, Humminbird's first gen FFS is quite advanced compared to other brand's first gen, especially without having an external processing box, but they're the third best option right now for overall performance. Humminbird's gen2 may be something very impressive given this is their starting point.

I think you'd be satisfied, especially at the sale price, with MegaLive. It's going to cost you 30-50% as much to get MegaLive than to rig another unit up front, and it's definitely not 50-70% worse than the others. Plus, in my situation, I was probably going to have to mount another battery to power the new units as my Solix's are power hogs already. Weight and charging complications. If you must have the best, you're going to be disappointed with MegaLive.

I have MegaLive and have been saying for a while I would eventually add a Garmin to my bow.

Previously I was having a difficult time seeing my lure in the 30-40’ range.


Prior to our tournament this weekend I updated the Software on my Helix and my Mega Live.

It was like I had a different unit. I was consistently watching my jig and 3.5” swim bait out to 60’+.

We were fishing Henry and I had caught about 8-10 2-2.5 lb largemouth and no spots. So was sitting on 2 fish around 11:00.

I moved to the middle of the creek channels and targeted individual spotted bass to finish off a 5 fish limit. I was consistently able to Locate and catch these smaller spots and cull a few ounces throughout the day before I went back to my largemouth areas to try to put a big fish in the boat. Never stumbled on a school of more than 2-3 fish and I had no problems targeting the smaller fish 50’ from the boat. Just need to locate some bigger fish.

I thought I located a large school of them and caught 2 1.5 lb crappie in a row on a jerk bait.


After this weekend and the update, I’m not going to spend the money on switching to Garmin.



I don’t think anyone can honestly say Humminbird is better, pretty sure the consensus is nothing beats the LVS34.

If I did not already have a Humminbird unit, I would go Garmin.

If you already have birds on the bow, I don’t think the difference is worth investing in new graphs. Just my opinion.

I have also been in a boat and fished with the Garmin LVS34.

We were not targeting bass but were crappie fishing. I actually had an easier time seeing crappie in the trees with my MegaLive than in his boat with a Garmin.

I was a couple fish from a limit and my buddy had one.

So I spotlocked in the middle of the lake
And jumped in his boat.

Went to the same brush piles I was fishing and we were able to catch fish, but I just didn’t feel like the fish jumped out on the screen. They seemed to be the same color as the brush, where the fish were much brighter on my graph. We adjusted his settings never could get a similar contrast as what I was seeing on my graph.

Now you could count the branches on a tree at 50’, but I’d rather be able to see the fish than count the individual branches. Now with my update the brush is much clearer out further.

I can spot the lure no problem on MegaLive (G3 Helix) and the current update does improve target separation for fish and cover some. I haven't seen any others first hand, but based on the Live Feeds for BASS, I can definitely see differences in the brands. Does it work? Maybe - I've not fished schools in isolated areas with it because that's not my comfort zone. It doesn't work well in Grass, I can tell you that. But, finding fish on Docks or Shallower trees, sure!

I had Garmins on my past few boats and my good friend I fish with a lot has HB, he wanted his whole system to be compatible.

The latest update did wonders and we have routinely caught 30+ fish a day for the past few months on his Mega Live up to 70 feet out. It's not quite as clean as Garmin sometimes, but if you want compatibility I would def give it a look. Plus it's cool to sit at the console and watch your partner catch a fish on FFS.

Right now pollen on the water is an issue for all FFS units.

I have ML, went with it as I already has Solix. I’ve used Garmin and active target on my buddys boats, I agree with your assessment about distance and clarity; however the latest ML code upgrade made it a whole lot better. I’m now seeing my little keitech at 75 feet very clear. Though I’ve only been out once since the update. So we’ll see if it the improvement continues or if I can tweak it even farther.

After last update my mega live is great snd love having it with target lock

That's exciting to hear the Feb update was that significant, I'm on the previous version. Will report back after seeing the update on the water.

I think about things a little differently. If I’m going to spend money on something, I usually try and buy what I think is best, so I have no regrets. If you are brand loyal to the bird, I get that too. But if you really want the “best” front looker, Bird is the last choice.