Just when I thought I'd narrowed down my list for my kayak, Lowrance comes along and, in the process of 'simplifying' things, has added another one to choose from. 

I can't seem to understand what is being sacrificed in the name of 'getting back to the basics'.  Anyone have any knowledge or impressions of these and maybe compare to Elite or Mark units?

The Hook is just the replacement of the Elite models that replaced the Mark models.

Time marches on, you either keep up or fall behind.

Marine electronics models go through about two year cycles of production and then are replaced by new stuff.

Mfg have to come out with new stuff to create the desire for new stuff so they can sell more new stuff.

Shipping in mid-February I understand.

Non-networkable stand-alone entry level units that offer mapping, CHIRP, and DownScan depending on the unit you select.

Compatible with Insight, Navionics Gold, Fishing Hotspots Pro, Hotmaps Premium, C-Map and a couple others.

3 to 9 inch screen sizes.

If it will ease your thought process, Lowrance, beginning January 2015 (last year) went to a Five Year Family! That means the Elite-TI and HOOK families have 5 years ahead of them before design or hardware changes.

I have a Hook 7x Sonar/DI showing up next week. I'll give my review after I set it up and fish it the next week. 

As I had suspected it's the same finder as last year's Elite Chirp models just with a new name. That's why they cost the same. 

It's a good finder and I really like it, but there isn't anything new with the 7" model. 

On ‎1‎/‎6‎/‎2016 at 1:10 PM, Wayne P. said:

The Hook is just the replacement of the Elite models that replaced the Mark models.

Time marches on, you either keep up or fall behind.

Marine electronics models go through about two year cycles of production and then are replaced by new stuff.

Mfg have to come out with new stuff to create the desire for new stuff so they can sell more new stuff.

X2.

Great racket.

Wish I had thought of it.

Go with the Hook to be up to date.

According to the guy I spoke to at lowrance tech support, the Hook series has a little faster processor than the original HDI Elite series.  That is the one complaint I have with my elite 7 hdi is that it is slow to respond to pressing buttons, especially when running DI, Sonar, and Mapping all at the same time.  Hopefully the Hook series has that issue fixed.

The Hook 7x does operate with the same quickness as my HDS-8, so if the previous model was slow they did fix that. It jumps like a frog on a dynamite pond when you press a button.