Buying Guide: What to Look for in a Budget-Friendly Fish Finder
Waterproof
In the neighborhood of $300, you’ll find lots of cheap, gimmicky fish finders that don’t deliver performance you’ll appreciate. And one of the common issues with entry-level fishing tech is that the off-brand stuff is typically not waterproof.
That’s simply unacceptable.
Off-brand fish finders like this Lucky aren’t even minimally waterproof.
From rain to high humidity to an accidental splash, your fishing electronics need to be built to tackle the elements, even at this price point.
And while castable fish finders depend on your smartphone, smartwatch, or tablet, transom-mounted electronics like the Garmin, Humminbird, and Lowrance are built with wet environments in mind.
This is essential, and you shouldn’t buy a fish finder that doesn’t have an IPX7 rating (or better).
Screen quality
Screen quality matters a lot in the real world.
Direct sunlight can make a fish finder’s screen difficult to read, and if you’re actively fishing rather than studying your screen, you may be glancing at it from an obtuse angle.
Excellent screens are bright and legible at relatively extreme angles, but you can’t expect miracles at this price point.
What you should demand, however, are readable images that allow you to make full use of your fish finder, and unfortunately, the off-brands aren’t going to deliver on this front.
Garmin, Humminbird, and Lowrance know fishing tech, and the screens they supply on their entry-level models are pretty capable.
Of course, castable fish finders depend on your paired device, so make sure that it’s legible in direct sun!
User interface
Experienced anglers will agree that touch screens are much easier to use than push buttons.
But at this price point, that’s not an option you’ll find. Instead, expect push buttons and menus to get the job done.
The good news is that on entry-level models, the range of bells and whistles is reduced, making navigation a slot easier with buttons than it would be on flagship fish finders. That said, there are better and worse, and Garmin almost always has the easiest-to-learn UIs.
What is Sonar?
Even the most basic fishfinder offers pretty amazing technology.
Fishfinders use sonar to detect the bottom and image its shape, as well as identify fish in the water column. Your transducer emits a sound - at far too high a frequency for you to hear - that travels through the water.
These sound waves strike objects like the bottom, or a fish, and bounce.
Your transducer picks up these bouncing sound waves, and the electronics within convert them into images.
Sonar is just sound. It’s beyond the range of human hearing, but in principle, it’s no different than any other noise.
Sound takes the form of a wave, with crests and troughs or peaks and valleys. Higher frequencies pack more of these oscillations into a given span of time than do lower frequencies.
Traditional fishfinding sonar is typically capable of dual-frequency broadcasting and reception, meaning that the transducer can transmit and receive two different frequencies simultaneously.
Typically, this pairing involved a low frequency and a high frequency, offering both water column penetration and high-quality imagining and target separation.
Low frequencies
Low frequencies penetrate water better than high frequencies. Fish finders with very low-frequency transducers can “see” through the water better, allowing them greater depth.
The weakness of low frequencies, however, is that every oscillation provides data, and with less crests and troughs per second, they can’t provide as much information as high frequencies.
Think about your mobile phone for a second. It works much the same way, which is why 4G can carry more information - more data per second - than 3G. Higher frequencies equal more information.
High frequencies
High frequencies offer greater detail, allowing your fish finder to “find” fish and tell you their size and location.
They can’t penetrate much water, however, and they can’t tell you much about the bottom, including details like structure and cover.
What is CHIRP Sonar?
CHIRP stands for Compressed High Intensity Radar Pulse, and it’s an improved sonar technique first developed for military applications.
Instead of a short burst or “ping” of sonar at two different frequencies, a CHIRP-capable transducer broadcasts a much longer burst that covers a wide spectrum of frequencies from low to high, covering everything in between.
It transmits much more sound energy into the water than traditional sonar, resulting in more energy returning to the transducer. That gives your fishfinder a lot more information to work with, and it can provide much better imaging quality and accuracy.
AIRMAR, perhaps the world’s leader in transducer tech, says this:
“Traditional marine fishfinders operate at discrete frequencies such as 50 kHz and 200 kHz, use relatively short-duration transmit pulses, and use narrow band sonar transducers. In contrast, Chirp (compressed high-intensity radar pulse) uses a precise sweep pattern of many frequencies within a long-duration transmit pulse from a broadband transducer, so the equivalent sound energy transmitted into the water is 10 to 1,000 times greater than a conventional marine fishfinder. The echo energy returning to the transducer, superior to that generated by a conventional transducer, is then processed by the fishfinder’s DSP (digital signal processing) computer and displayed in ultra-sharp detail on the display. The combination of Chirp, a broadband transducer, and the fish finder’s DSP, results in dramatically better fish and bottom detection, superior depth capability, and significantly better performance at speed.”
GPS
GPS-enabled fish finders offer options that you really want on the water, and from waypointing to marking, they can be game-changing.
From pre-season scouting to hazard avoidance, if you have a GPS option at a similar price point, go for it.
Water temperature
All of the fish finders on our shortlist can measure the water temperature, a vital piece of information for anglers.
Battery Life
Transom-mounted fish finders use external batteries as a power source, and run times are virtually unlimited given their minimal draw.
But castable fish finders use internal lithium batteries, and run times can be far shorter than you’d expect.
The numbers offered by manufacturers are almost always highly optimistic, and in the real world, you can cut them in half, if not a third.
Bluetooth range
Castable fish finders pair with smart devices via a Bluetooth connection, and ideally, you want the longest range you can get.
But realistically, your smart device’s antenna determines the maximum range, but water conditions can have a profound impact on this number. In choppy conditions, expect the range to be much shorter than on calm days.
Our Picks: The Deeper Chirp 2 and the Garmin STRIKER 4!
Anglers looking for inexpensive fish finders have great options available, if they know where to look. And two of the best choices are the Deeper Chirp 2 and the Garmin STRIKER 4.
The Deeper CHIRP 2 is easily the best castable fish finder on the market. A decided improvement over the Deeper Start and Pro+, the CHIRP 2 has excellent CHIRP sonar available in three frequency ranges and transducer cone angles.
With an easy-to-operate UI, long battery life, quick recharge times, and full-featured sonar, it puts powerful tech in the hands of anglers who can’t mount a fish finder to a boat.
For fishermen looking for an inexpensive, capable transom-mounted fish finder, there’s no better option than the remarkable STRIKER 4 from Garmin.
It pairs a pretty good screen with the best sonar system at this price point, adding GPS to the mix. Supplied with a CHIRP-capable transducer, it simply leaves its competitors in the dust. Its UI is easy to learn and navigate, and overall, it’s just a great buy.
We hope that this article has helped you make the right choice for your needs and budget, and we’d love to hear from you if you have questions or comments.
Please leave a comment below!
