Fixing to buy either a 1197 or HDS 10. Heard HDS 10 is not real user friendly but has some nice options. Pros/cons ?

go to basspro, or similar and play with them yourself. everyone has their own personal preferences, and it becomes a pissing match similar to ford vs chevy. you are the only one who knows what suits you best, so find someone to give you on the water demonstration- or go push the buttons on both for a few hours thats what the demos are for

I played with both a couple weeks ago, and have to say- both are excellent machines. I have my preference, and its biased- I prefer the bird 1197.

SkeeterRonnie gave good advise. Go look at the demos and play with them. His preference is the Bird, mine is Lowrance. 2 responses and both different. Like SkeeterRonnis said, all you will get on here are opinions and no one can tell you what is best for you.

appreciate the input i have already done some of that. im leaning towards the lowrance but there is alot of info there that you cannot digest in an afternoon at bps.

Lowrance is having problems with water getting in there HDS units and there custermer service sucks , there was a post on here about it awhile back You might want to go back and check it out

Couldn't agree more.

Hummingbird has been making them longer and already worked out there kinks.

I love lowrance. Never had a problem hardly with mine in six years and when I needed em they fixed it even out of warranty. The lowrance has more features and the sonar is better. They're not hard to use either once you learn where everything is at in the menu. Kind of nice to go to the exact page you want and not have to flip through the pages like the bird.

Are you speaking from personal experience? I have HDS 8 & 5 and have never had a problem. Structure Scan/Down Scan is amazing and Lowrance sonar is far superior to a hummingbird IMO.

the water problem was in the HDS5 units, which Lowrance wasn't able to determine which units were bad--assembly problem--but the 2 year warranty takes care of the problem. Those units should have been returned by vendors. Customer service hasn't been the best, but if you read between the lines, alot of the problems are user issues, and those users won't admit that. If you can't install the unit ,get it done professionally and let that person set it up and spend time with you to navigate through the new menus. Alot more info in Lowrance units than in Humminbird. The 1197 and the HDS10 will be equal units, other than the hi speed transducer you will need to run the HB over 5 mph. The newer units from HB have added extra sd card ports and able to read additional mapping besides Navionics. the preloaded mapping is Navionics 2006, with no way to upgrade besides buying a newer version. Lowrance will read all mapping on the market.

Just as an fyi, not poking at you, HB allows you to select or de-select views that are capable on the unit. I do believe there are more views on the HB unit than the Lowrance. Plus, on the HB, you have hot buttons that will take you directly to your own preset view without having to go scroll through the other views.

I don't know all of the features of the new Lowrance units as I have been moving completely over to HB. Got tired of dealing with the customer service from Lowrance. They did charge me to repair a unit that was one month out of warranty and the issue was a manufacturing problem. Water in the unit.

Like said above lowrance has the much better sonar but u can't beat how much more user friendly the HB is over the Lowrance

I asked before I bought! Hummingbird 1197 is the way I went. Now Im buying another. WOW is all I can say.And thear customer service the best.Like the guy at bass pro said send either brand unit back on the same day and see which comes back first.If you go lowrance you may not have a graph for a while.

my 997 bird is awesome it is a machine of the future.

After water getting in a 332c and two 520c's, I've gone with the 'Birds and am very happy with their units and much more satisfied with their customer service.