This is a novelty appeared, at a very interesting price since it costs less than 400 $, postage included. Lowrance with this series has just made the DownScan Imaging available at an affordable price.
Characteristics
A reminder of the benefits of the Lowrance Elite 5x HDI.
Number 5 means 5 “screen (12.7 cm) and x means ‘no gps’.
HDI stands for Hybrid Dual Imaging. This acronym means that this sonar has both a standard 2D view and a 3D DownScan Imaging view.
The screen is in 256 colors for a resolution of 480 horizontal pixels by 480 vertical pixels. Which means that on a background of 5 m, each pixel represents about 1 cm of height. A trademark of Lowrance, the screen has been designed to be visible even in direct sunlight, a feature validated on sunny days.
Two probes are proposed, the fresh water probe 83/200 kHz (cones 60 ° / 20 °) for the 2D view and 455/800 kHz for the 3D view downscan imaging and the probe which will be more adapted to the sea 50/200 kHz 455/800 kHz.
Unpacking
At the opening of the box, we find the screen, the support, a user manual ( user manual), an installation manual, hardware, a 3A fuse, a fuse holder, a blue cable to connect the probe to the screen, a power cable also blue plugged with the other end 3 son whose phase and neutral already bare as well as the son for the NMEA connection.
Power supply
For power supply you can choose a PowerSonic brand lead-free battery 4.5 Ah. To connect the power leads to the battery, use insulated female flat lugs. With this battery 4.5 Ah it holds up to half a day. For the day prefer 7Ah battery. It recharges in 2 hours with this charger distributed by pike n bass very simple to use and very reassuring, it displays a red diode when charging and goes green once completed. Note that there is also this one that is suitable for this battery. Charger distributed by pike n bass.
Installation
The connections are very simple, the power wire and son of the sonar are both connected to sonar via blue waterproof plugs easily built in, we can not go wrong.
The screen support is easily clipped / unclipped so it can be stored quickly in a secure placeWhen you first start the device, the menu is in English, configured with US units.
Use
1- Installation wizard
Once the unit is turned on for the first time, the installation wizard gives you the choice to either set your own settings or return to the default settings.
2- Pages, Selection and Menus
This window contains four pages: Downscan, Depth Sounder, Depth Sounder / Downscan (Vertical) and Depth Sounder / Downscan (Horizontal).
To select a page, it is very simple, you press the arrow of the keypad that points towards the selected page and you press the Enter key.
Once you have selected your desired page, you have access to sub-pages that contain menus such as the Downscan and the sounder
You have four different views, only 2D mode, 3D mode only (Down scan imaging), sharing the screen with the 2D on the left of the screen and the 3D on the right and to finish the 2D at the top, the 3D below.
You also have the possibility to display in 2D the views of two 83/200 kHz probes side by side .. and there you understand the importance of the angles because you will not have the same images.
Text Entry
You will need to enter text (names of places, or other texts:
- Using the keypad, you can select the desired character and then press the Enter key, this function remains valid for all characters to be entered.
2. When you have finished entering text, select OK and press Enter.
Fishing Modes
According to your conditions and your fishing plans, you have the choice of parameters for each fishing mode, In use on water, I would advise you to start wisely with the settings auto.Vous have also start a help to configure your Elite 5x automatically, choice of the type of places (fresh water, open sea, etc …), units, level d expertise in pollsters, etc …
To manually set polling frequencies or sensitivity, the Menu button provides quick access to these parameters; it’s almost child’s play. Sensitivity is really a very important parameter because if you set it too strongly the image will be unreadable because you will display far too many parasitic elements, contrary to a sensitivity too low you will not see fish echoes and your lure evolve in the layer of water. It’s up to you to find the right configuration according to your spot.
Advice, when sharing screens favor views side by side so you will not lose precision on the water layer but you lose in depth of history which is less disturbing. Why ? in the case of the picture above if you share the screen on the horizontal plane you go from 480 pixels to 240 pixels to represent 4.7m … ie from 1.2 cm / pixel to 2.4 cm / pixel, you lose precision!
Standby mode
As you know, the standby mode helps you conserve battery power by reducing the contrast and duration of the display or turning off the screen1.
- it’s so simple, you press the PWR / LIGHT / button to access the light dialog box.
- Select Standby mode and press EntEr.
- Press any key to return to normal mode.
Menu Downscan
Pour afficher ce menu, vous pouvez appuyer sur la touche Menu dans n’importe quelle page Downscan, comme montré sur l’image à coté.
Noise rejection
you can use advanced signal processing to control the effects that noise (boat pumps, water conditions, engine start, etc.) produces on your display and then filters unwanted signals.
Surface Clarity
You can reduce the sensitivity of the receiver and therefore reduce the interference that is nothing more than surface clarity.
Split Zoom
You can also from the same menu, share the zoom screen display, according to the desired level 2X or 4X, to do this, Press the + / – buttons to zoom in or out.
Little advice, we must ban the Fish ID mode which is absolutely unreliable.
In the options it is better to disable noise rejection and surface clarity.
we advise you to set the scale hard because if the background often varies the scale auto resizes the screen and it can quickly be annoying!
Sonar Operation
On this unit you have two types of sonar images: conventional and downscan images, we’ll explain how it works, the conventional images are easy to understand, so we’ll take care of the images that concern the Downscan sounder.
Trackback
you have access to the recent history of your sonar for consultation, by moving the cursor to the left until the image on the screen begins to move backward.
Move the sonar history bar to the right to restore normal sonar scrolling or press Menu and select Exit Cursor mode.
Sonar menu
You can access your sonar menu by clicking menu on any displayed page.
Auto Sensitivity
One of the default settings, and allows you to maintain an automatic level of sensitivity according to the actual conditions, and thus allows you to not over-adjust your device
You can access your sonar menu by clicking menu on any displayed page
Sensitivity
This option, which appears at the top of the displayed page, allows you to choose the amount of detail that you can display on your screen, and thus does not overload the detail screen and also does not reduce the sensitivity too much to keep the screen display of desired echoes
Auto Sensitivity
One of the default settings, and allows you to maintain an automatic level of sensitivity according to the actual conditions, and thus allows you to not over-adjust your device
Range
This option allows you to choose the depth to display, that is, from the water surface to the selected depth scale, you can leave it in automatic mode, which is the default setting of the device or choose according to your needs.
Frequency
This is the Transducer Frequency Control used by your device.
the Lowrance-Elite-5 supports three standard frequencies, which are: 50 kHz, 83 kHz and 200 kHz, and each frequency has its own use and features:
The 50 kHz frequency gives the best penetration depth (vertically), so you refer to the section of the scale mentioned above.
The frequency of 83 kHz gives a better wide detection coverage covering a wider horizontal water column.
The 200 kHz frequency gives the highest sensitivity among the three, and the best separation of targets in shallow waters. so he combines the two before
Ping speed
As you already know, each fishing mode has its own settings in terms of transducer settings, and therefore this option allows you to set an interval between the sounding waves sent to the probes for the detection, this adjustment which allows in turn to adjust the Ping speed which contributes to the reduction of the interferences of other transducers.
Settings Menu
This menu allows you to access the basic settings of the installation and configuration of your device with regard to system settings, audio settings, alarms, and languages like the other menu, you can via the keys of the keypad access any menu to put your own settings
Specifcations
