Entry Level Forward Facing Sonar is Here

With the recent announcement of the Lowrance Eagle Eye 9, forward facing sonar has become significantly more accessible. The Eagle is currently Lowrance’s entry level series and now there is a model that is capable of forward facing sonar. As of the writing of this post, it’s the cheapest live sonar charplotter and transducer combination. In the arms race in fishing electronics, it’s inevitable that features that were once considered advanced would make their way onto entry level units. That was the case with side imaging and live mapping technologies for instance.

As an electronics enthusiast, I reviewed the features that the Eagle Eye 9 has to offer and give some thoughts on entry level sonar. It did seem pretty interesting.

Features

To be clear this is based purely on specifications released. Of course we would need to get our hands on a unit first to get an accurate review. Most of this chartplotter’s features are common across all Eagle units but we’ll focus specifically on the live sonar aspect.

The unit must specifically be an Eagle Eye 9 model and it comes with the transducer. Other Eagle units are not able to use live sonar. Now this package (unit and transducer) costs a mere $1000 USD. Unlike Garmin Livescope and Lowrance Active Target transducers, there is no black box, just a direct plug in. This greatly simplifies the installation process. The transducer can be mounted on a transom or trolling motor.

In terms of live sonar views, there are forward and down views. There is standard 2D and Downscan views as well. You would be able to switch between views without moving the transducer which is pretty handy.

Compared to standard forward facing sonar views, it is somewhat reduced as you can see from the images. Scout mode is not available. It does share the same resolution as Active Target 2 so we should expect a somewhat similar performance.

As an entry level unit, it is not networkable which means that it cannot communicate with other units and share transducers.

Thoughts and Impressions

Most people’s complaints about forward facing sonar comes from the lack of accessibility. At this price point, it’s definitely much more accessible for more casual anglers. Live sonar has only been available on mid to high level units which was a significant barrier to entry. Without a module, installation is very simple and you don’t need ethernet and an additional power cable.

As someone from the north, I can actually see this being useful for ice anglers. Scan with the forward mode to find fish and then switch to down mode for the actual fishing. The portability aspect is good when you have to hole hop. The lack of a black box makes the whole bundle really compact. Though like all live sonar setups, there will be investments required for the shuttle, pole and batteries. The power consumption might be less than traditional live sonar but you would probably still need some hefty lithium batteries.

I do think that for more avid anglers including myself, traditional live sonar is what I will still use. I do need access to the features that more advanced chartplotters like the HDS and Elite series offer like networking, touch screen and side scan. Fishing is one of the few things I do in life so I can afford to invest heavily into it.

As this is based of announcements, there is likely more information to come. Perhaps there could be enhancements in the form of updates that might make it better. For a casual angler who may not want to invest so much into electronics, this can open up opportunities. There will definitely be a target market that could potentially make use of this.