I have a Fish elite 480 Mono on my bow right now with GPS. I want to upgrade to color unit and was wonding if I can leave my 480 there for GPS and add the 510 for sonar? Opinions on the 510?
Thanks Jim

I just bought a x510c a few monthes ago and love it. I put it right next to my gps so i now have full screen sonar and full screen gps/chartplotter. I down loaded the 510 onto my pc before i bought it and played with it for awhile to get used to it. I would just leave everything set at the factory settings. Lowrance has their @#$% together when it comes to their settings. One cool thing you might want to play with is the color back ground. You'd love this unit and the price is good also. The color is nice and crisp and you can see it when the sun is out no problem.

I upgraded from a Lowrance X75 to the 510. Worse mistake I ever made. The 510 is junk in shallow water under 6ft in depth. Mine locked up a froze constantly. The depth range in the auto mode was always off, often painting the screen in yellow or red leaving very little if any veiwing area for the actual sonar return info.
I finally got rid of it after sending it in to lowrance three times with software upgrades that never worked. I now have a vexilar edge 2 that is a great graph. My old Lowrance x75 was also good. Color in my experience was not good had to have the back light on all the time.

See this; http://www.walleyecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148494

Its not just the 510 see this; http://www.walleyecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148145

Fishing season where I live is too short to deal with these problems.

I upgraded from a Lowrance X75 to the 510. Worse mistake I ever made. The 510 is junk in shallow water under 6ft in depth. Mine locked up a froze constantly. The depth range in the auto mode was always off, often painting the screen in yellow or red leaving very little if any veiwing area for the actual sonar return info.
I finally got rid of it after sending it in to lowrance three times with software upgrades that never worked. I now have a vexilar edge 2 that is a great graph. My old Lowrance x75 was also good. Color in my experience was not good had to have the back light on all the time.

See this; http://www.walleyecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148494

Its not just the 510 see this; http://www.walleyecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148145

Fishing season where I live is too short to deal with these problems.

You are one bitter dude is this the only thing that hasn't work the way you wanted or are you just that pissed at Lowrance shake it off life is to short Merry X-mas and Happy New Year

You are one bitter dude is this the only thing that hasn't work the way you wanted or are you just that pissed at Lowrance shake it off life is to short Merry X-mas and Happy New Year

I often use the forum to make informed decisions on purchases with my hard earned money.
I want to hear the good ,bad and ugly.
A fellow member was asking for an opinon.
I gave him my story based on my experience.
A $500 purchase is nothing to sneeze at.
Lowrance products have issues.
The way they handle problems gives you the run around. Try this try that. I was wanting a fix they could have told me they didn`t have one yet.
Lowrance is not the same company today that they were 10 years ago.
My old 1999 Lowrance X75 was a great graph in all water conditions. This line of product earned Lowrance the good reputation they have today.

I understand whofan's complaint about the 510, as I have seen the same shallow water performance problems with the 334. My experience with Lowrance service is positive. I have found them very helpful and committed to making me happy with their product. They replaced my 334 with a 527 and provided a software upgrade that solved the shallow water problems. I understand the same software upgrade is available for the 510, but would require returning to the factory- best to ask. Note that the software fix is at present a "beta" version and not yet released as a formal, supported product, so don't be in a hurry to buy. Wait until you can get a new unit with the revised software already loaded- version number will probably be higher than current formal release, which is 2.4.0.

And, yes, I think this is a lot of hassle compared to other vendor's products. If I didn't have such an investment in Lowrance products, I might have switched brands, too. It is remarkable that people report such different experiences with Lowrance service- it seems Lowrance needs to improve consistency and quality in that part of their business.

Hey crosbystick whofan gave his experience and opinion, that's what the poster wanted. He didn't say can you tell me how great Lowrance is :-)

Hey crosbystick whofan gave his experience and opinion, that's what the poster wanted. He didn't say can you tell me how great Lowrance is :-)
Were in my post did I once say how great Lowrance was?????????

I will like say that yes I don`t like to be negative.
I do believe Lowrance has the best hardware going, it really is the software they can`t seem to get right.
Today Lowrance is still good but now they are no better than Humminbird.
Also its not just Humminbird and Lowrance, you can shop Furuno, Vexilar , Garmin and many others.
Vexilar is expensive but I bought one and its a great graph.
In hind sight I should have kept the X75. Someone on Ebay got a good graph cheap because I got bit by the color bug.
I had no reservations buying the 510c based on my X75 experience. My mistake.
My advice is that if the electronics on your boat are working good for you stick with them until they`re dead.
Color is pretty which is nice but working monchrome is better than nonworking color.
Lowrance needs to do more testing before they release their new product. They been sloppy and its costing them.

I will like say that yes I don`t like to be negative.
I do believe Lowrance has the best hardware going, it really is the software they can`t seem to get right.
Today Lowrance is still good but now they are no better than Humminbird.
Also its not just Humminbird and Lowrance, you can shop Furuno, Vexilar , Garmin and many others.
Vexilar is expensive but I bought one and its a great graph.
In hind sight I should have kept the X75. Someone on Ebay got a good graph cheap because I got bit by the color bug.
I had no reservations buying the 510c based on my X75 experience. My mistake.
My advice is that if the electronics on your boat are working good for you stick with them until they`re dead.
Color is pretty which is nice but working monchrome is better than nonworking color.
Lowrance needs to do more testing before they release their new product. They been sloppy and its costing them.
I totaly agree and I hope they learned something from there struggles. or u are right lots of people on the fence right now. If the new HD's are riddled with problems it could be lights out. They are trying to correct every thing but its been slowwww. I've seen the Vexilar in action and looked like a nice unit, also seen some Bird's in action they looked good also so there are options Lowrance needs to stay on there toe's !!!

From the other thread.
I have the 510c & have no problems. If in auto it will loose bottom in 3-4' but you just have to manually turn down the sensitivity a little & it comes back. The only time I'm that shallow is coming into a dock anyway.
I don't run in auto, for most situations set sensitivity to 80-90%, maybe down to 50% shallow. Crank ping speed to max. Chart speed near max.
http://www.walleyecentral.com/forums/images/misc/progress.gif

I often use the forum to make informed decisions on purchases with my hard earned money.
I want to hear the good ,bad and ugly.
A fellow member was asking for an opinon.
I gave him my story based on my experience.
A $500 purchase is nothing to sneeze at.
Lowrance products have issues.
The way they handle problems gives you the run around. Try this try that. I was wanting a fix they could have told me they didn`t have one yet.
Lowrance is not the same company today that they were 10 years ago.
My old 1999 Lowrance X75 was a great graph in all water conditions. This line of product earned Lowrance the good reputation they have today.


We spend a lot of money on these things and to have to turn around and get upgrades, adjust this, tweak that, send it in etc etc is total BS.

I've got a 510 that has been trouble free. I very much dislike Lowrance's GPS operating system so I use Garmin GPS's mounted above both Lowrance depthfinders. Yep, two Garmin's and two Lowrance's. As much screen area as the combo units and far less trouble, much more user friendly.

Back to the topic though, I have had much better luck with my 510 than my friends wwho have had some very serious problems with their Lowrance color units. So much so that one of them carries a spare. The problem with spending a couple thousand on one of their units is once the warranty runs out, you are screwed . . . and from what I've seen the odds of a complete failure are very high. I would not even consider buying a new one, I'll be going with a different brand when it's time for a new boat.

I bought a 510 a few weeks ago. How do you get the select language menu from popping up when you turn the unit on?

I went to the menu and brought up Set Language and selected English and then hit enter. The menu still pops up every time I turn it on.

Thanks, Bob

I've got a 510 that has been trouble free. I very much dislike Lowrance's GPS operating system so I use Garmin GPS's mounted above both Lowrance depthfinders. Yep, two Garmin's and two Lowrance's. As much screen area as the combo units and far less trouble, much more user friendly.

Back to the topic though, I have had much better luck with my 510 than my friends wwho have had some very serious problems with their Lowrance color units. So much so that one of them carries a spare. The problem with spending a couple thousand on one of their units is once the warranty runs out, you are screwed . . . and from what I've seen the odds of a complete failure are very high. I would not even consider buying a new one, I'll be going with a different brand when it's time for a new boat.

I always run a Vexilar flasher on my boat, and than decide what my GPS/Graph options should be if added, in that order. If Vexilar decides to run a new version of the EDGE III, lets call it an EDGE IV just for fun, with GPS mapping and data card capability's...well...BADA-BIND...the clutter on my dash would diminish very quickly.

I dropped Lowrance out of the running a few years back for reasons of user friendliness, and the big issue the software bugs that lead to chronic customer support issues. I'm used to exceptional customer support when needed with Vexilar and Garmin, and Lowrance is not even on the same page as far as support or dependability of product..so that was that..I had enough of that run around.

Garmin has made the most innovative and customer focused graphs and chart plotters on the market for many years, and I'm always curious on what innovations and new technologies they pull from their hat next, something is brewing there again. There units take user friendliness to a whole new level and others quickly try to catch up.

For now, Hummingbird has a distinct market edge in more categories of both GPS and sonar graph technology. I still believe Garmin makes the best gps units by far, but they need to step up there inland mapping program to better compete on the inland lakes market.

The facts of life now in the GPS world is fairly straight forward, mapping sells the unit, no available quality mapping..the units will not sell well. It is a bit like the tail wags the dog, but it's true.

LakeMaster and Garmin do work together on mapping, as now does Hummingbird, so my assumption is mapping will expand for them both on inland waterways and it will include expanded 3-D Vision formats, now used by Garmin, to a broader crossover format that Hummingbird may also use. (FYI: The Insight map Lowrance is now running, it is a basic version of that Garmin Vision mapping software)

Good things brewing, and the Hummingbirds are definitely on the wing.