I have owned 2 Lowrance LCX-111C HD mulfi-function displays for many years. Both have been so satisfactory that I'm still using them. Even though outdated, I find the charting perfectly adequate for the Chesapeake Bay and that general area of the east coast.
I recently bought an additional boat for Florida that had only a small 4" screen. To update that vessel, I purchased a Lowrance Hook 7 so as to have a larger screen to navigate by.
Unfortunately, I find it almost worthless for navigation. Both the 4" machine and the 2 much older Lowrance units clearly show shallow water in white, with deeper water in blue. The Hook 7 shows only blue with very little detail in the base map.
I then bought the Nautic Insight HD V16 chip which is compatible with Hook. It added so many contour lines and soundings that now the machine is truly unusable in the shallow water areas around Stuart, FL, for navigation. There is still no color differentiation.
When I called Lowrance, they said the Hook 7 was incapable of displaying shading to differentiate water depth. Thus, I'm still having to use the 4" machine of another manufacturer for navigation.
Can someone tell me if this is truly all the Hook can do. If so, why would Lowrance sell such a non-capable machine in this day and age? At $700 with the chip, I don't consider it that inexpensive, although it's clearly not in the same league as the old LCX-111s.
I've never tested a Hook but I see in the manual that it's compatible with "Lake Insight® and Nautic Insight® PRO,
Navionics® +, C-MAP MAX-N, Fishing Hot Spots® PRO, & Insight Genesis." The manual is not specific about chart presentation controls, but in my experience Navionics and C-Map are both easier to read than Insight. But then again, I'm used to shallow depths being in shades of blue with deep water white.
Yes, I stand corrected. The shallow water is in blue and the deeper is in white on the 2 older Lowrances and the 4". The Hook is all blue.
I noticed recently that a Hook 7 display unit at a West Marine had some shading in the Stuart area in its demo mode, but only on the base map. That is not the reality on the water with my unit.