You can literally see where fish are hiding and where they’re moving to. You’ll probably continue to use your traditional CHIRP sonar for the bulk of your efforts to actually catch fish, but imaging gives you a ton of information. Those of you who haven’t fished using imaging before should seriously give it a try. We rarely found that structure was lacking in definition - it’s easy to figure out what’s going on underwater. And while it’s not quite as good as the UHD in its bigger brothers, the Echomap UHD 63cv still delivers. You can see up to 200 feet below your boat - structure is crystal clear. What’s surprising is that Garmin have managed to create such magnificently sharp imaging using a transducer that’s only capable of 800 kHz output. This is particularly handy if you’re doing ice fishing or jigging. You can also switch the sonar view from a traditional sonar view to a flasher view. Garmin is taking full advantage of this unit’s networking capabilities (which we’ll discuss further in the Networking section) to encourage anglers to save and share their data to improve their fishing. You can view your sonar history, share sonar data, and even record your sonar. There are a few nifty things you can do with the sonar. More data means more accuracy - it’s really as simple as that. More frequencies sent out means that the transducer gets a wider variety of signals back that it can interpret. This pulse gives you better target separation and sharper imaging. That’s why the sonar shoots out a range of frequencies - it’s a pulse, as opposed to traditional sonar, which simply sends out one frequency. That gives you great depth (up to 800 feet) and great coverage.įor those of you who don’t know, CHIRP stands for Compressed High Intensity Radiated Pulse. You’re getting CHIRP sonar that ranges from 150-240 kHz. The transducer that comes with the Echomap UHD 63cv is pretty impressive, considering its low price point. It’s wonderful - but you’ll have to read the Imaging section if you want to get the full picture (pun intended). Touchscreen only devices can be hard to use when they get wet.Īll in all, the interface on this isn’t remarkable, but it is fairly easy to use.Īt this point, we know some of you are probably waiting, with bated breath, to learn about the Ultra HD on this device. That’s actually a slight advantage to the Echomap UHD 63cv over its bigger brothers - they’re touchscreen only. There is an advantage to having touch controls - you can always control your device. As well, you can mark your location as a waypoint by simply pressing Mark. You can also press the Home and Menu buttons to navigate to those pages. The buttons are quite simple - move around with arrow keys, hit Select to choose something, hit Back to go to the previous menu. We won’t hold their feet to the fire on this point for any longer, though. We find joystick controls a lot easier to use than keypads, and they’re small enough to integrate into a package this size. Garmin’s rivals over at Humminbird have innovated with the SOLIX series by including a small joystick. Still, we’d like to see some innovation in this department. It’s not the end of the world - we’re sure most of you have navigated fish finder/chartplotters with arrow keys before - and we understand why they made the choice considering the price of the UHD 63cv. The reason for this is the lack of a touchscreen - you need to use arrow keys to navigate. The menus on the Echomap UHD 63cv are well laid out, but they can be a bit of a pain to navigate through. This degree of display customization is really impressive considering the size of the unit - we continue to be impressed by how well this thing punches above its weight. There are a variety of different kinds of split screen, so you can make some views bigger than others. You can adjust the color palette of the device. You can zoom in and out of a section of your view with the push of a button. You can switch the chart view of your sonar to a flasher mode. Many of the display features you’d expect on a high-end fish finder are here. You’re limited to only 3 panels on any given screen, but that’s to be expected size-wise. Despite the unit’s relatively small size, it’s easy to get information at a glance. There are also handy data overlays to tell you the depth of the column you’re fishing, as well as the water’s temperature. You also get to create custom views on this unit - that means you can view charts, ClearVü, and sonar simultaneously. All standard, but when “standard” comes in a package this inexpensive, we take note. The backlit display means you can use it in pretty much all weather conditions - rain or shine, in fog, and even if you’re fishing at night. That’s a bit on the smaller side, but it’s still going to help more than one angler in any vessel. You’re getting an HD, 6” backlit display.
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