If this has been covered before, please guide me to that thread. If it has not.............

I am seeing a number of fish finders in the $80-$100 price range. They are Garmin, Lowrance and Humminbird.

When buying a fish finder in this price range, are you limited to quality or just bells and whitles?

I am after nothing more than a depth finder as well as one that shows the structure below. I don't need all the color, imaging and things of that sort.

Just a basic one for now. As long as it does the job.

Can anyone offer any suggestions or advice on which one is better over the other int his price range?

(If it matters, it will be mounted on a 14' aluminum jonboat)

HB P'max 170 is a great unit.

I own 2 of the Humminbird Piranhamax now and I think they are a great unit for the money.

I have never owned one, let alone used one........

I'm looking at the HB P'Max 170 in the BPS catalog.

How well does it show the structure below? Is it pretty accurate?

I hear how the faster you go, the slower the depth reading is, Is that right? What speed are we talking about? 10mph or 50mph?

If your transducer is mounted properly you should be able to get good readings up to 45 mph or so on most units depending on the depth of water. You may have to play with ping rate and chart speed but the manual should tell you how and why to adjust them.

For any LCR unit, get the highest vertical pixel count screen you can afford or within comparable units.

The more screen resolution you have the better the images you will get.

Humminbirds do not have a ping rate adjustment. The unit adjusts that according to the depth.

All properly installed units are "accurate". It's the display quality that counts.

Regarding speed. I have an Eagle Cuda, portable, powered by 8 AA batteries on my canoe. It runs all the time when I am in the canoe, powered by a 55 pound thrust MinnKota trolling motor. Not very fast.

I have found patches of bottom I would have zipped right over in my Z-7 and never noticed. To keep it simple, let's compare 60 mph to 5 mph. 60 mph is 88 feet per second. Let's say there is a patch of bottom 44 feet in diameter that holds fish, and is different in structure, composition or cover. At 60 mph it takes a half second to buzz over that fish producing piece of bottom. It takes 6 second for my canoe to pass over that spot. Which speed is going to produce a better image of that bottom, or the history of it? If the units are scrolling at the same speed, and for the sake of discussion the image produced on the Z-7 is 1/12 of an inch, the image on the canoe's sounder will be one inch of history on the screen.

On the side imaging, optimum speed for producing the best images is about five mph. One of my favorite ponds I learned fishing from my canoe before I had the Z-7. I cannot tell you how many productive small patches of bottom I found just because the boat was moving slowly. Now, I catch more fish from that pond in my Z-7 than I would in my canoe simply because I have all those spots stored in the Z-7's Humminbird. I spend 1/12th time travelling from spot to spot. But, that's because I "built the foundation" for fishing that pond from my canoe.

Me and my tourney partner both have HB Pmax 170's on our jon boats. Mine has been great. He had something wrong with his where it wouldn't show the depth at times and he exchanged it for a new one. You could hear that the pinging wasn't correct if you put your ear to the transducer. He's had the new one longer than the old one and both of ours work great. My only problem is that, probably due to the riveted jon boat hull, the transducer gets air and gives a 200+ft reading. This is only while using the outboard...never with the TM.

After learning to read it correctly I can tell when it's a hard bottom, structure or a school of baitfish. It's leaps and bounds better than my previous depth finder...which was none at all.

HB P'max 170 is a great unit.

as for this unit..........when you purchase this unit, does it come with EVERYTHING you would need or are there other parts that have to be bought as well? (mounting hardware, etc)

Scratch that...do NOT get the P'max 170. Mine has started going out as well where it only shows the temp but reads the depth as "0". It's like the sonar is working correctly. It's only happening intermittently but this has now happened on two different boats with three different units.

Scratch that...do NOT get the P'max 170. Mine has started going out as well where it only shows the temp but reads the depth as "0". It's like the sonar is working correctly. It's only happening intermittently but this has now happened on two different boats with three different units.

hmmmmm, thanks for the heads up

I have a boat just under 19" with my transducer shooting through the hull on the pad. At 50mph GPS I can read bottom to about 200'. While not an expert I think what happens at greater depths the t'ducer is gone before the signal gets back.

I should have added that reading at speed are very dependant on water flow off the boat and with aluminum plotting at speed can be an issue.

The HB PMax 170 is a great unit! It comes with everything you need to get it up and running right away. I have used one for the last two seasons. For a unit under $100 you can't go wrong! Never had an issue with mine yet.

I guess what is perfect for some may not be best for others.............

I am hearing more positive than negative in the reviews I have read here as well as on BPS website......

I have a boat just under 19" with my transducer shooting through the hull on the pad. At 50mph GPS I can read bottom to about 200'. While not an expert I think what happens at greater depths the t'ducer is gone before the signal gets back.

Let's do some math. In two hundred feet of water the "ping" has to travel 400 feet to get back to the transducer. Roughly, sound (the ping) travels at 4500 feet per second. That means it takes less than a tenth of a second for the sound to echo back to the transducer. 50 mph equates to 75 feet per second. At 50 mph, your boat has travelled 7.5 feet.

Keep in mind a transducer emits a "cone" of sound. A 30 degree cone will have a diameter of 600 feet on the bottom in 200 feet of water. That signal reflected back has a 1200 foot diameter "footprint" at the surface. At fifty mph there is no way your boat will be outside of that reflected circle. That's based on a hard, flat bottom that will reflect most of the signal.

If you're talking side imaging, or down imaging emissions which are razor thin, you could out run the echo.

If my math is off, feel free to correct me.

Now, you may get a weak, or no return at those speeds, but it isn't because you've outrun the signal. It is most likely due to the air that gets swept beneath the boat at that speed. Air bubbles can diminish or block the transmission and return of the signal from the transducer.

Keep your eye out for any of the greyscale 5" Eagle units like the Fishmark 480, they pop up from time to time new in the box on ebay for $100-$125. They come with everything you need to mount to a boat, and they are very good units.