Northwest Fishing Reports

Hey guy's and gal's, I am looking into the Lowrance Point 1 GPS unit and wondering if its worth the extra money? I will be using with a Elite 7 HDI unit. I have read a few reviews online and people seem to really like it but them seem to be more bass fisherman then anything. Thanks for your input.

not sure if the Elite has a built in GPS. the only thing that the point one is a position and heading device. The Point-1 provides extremely accurate and rapid boat position and speed updates. one thing is it needs calibrated every time you go out... you have to go do a couple of donuts in the water before you take off... another thing I had to purchase the NMEA 2000 starter kit to use my point one on my 3rd gen HDS touch.

The main reason for wanting to add one of these would be if your existing unit didnt get good GPS reception where its located now. If the Elite 7 is working fine then this wont help you very much. I doubt very much you would be able to tell any big difference in performance between the built in unit and this add on unless your running at 50 mph or have very poor antenna reception where the unit is now mounted.

The purpose of the point one is a, faster acquisition, b, it's has a bearing compass built in and c is the amount of data exchanged. Instead of once or twice a second info its transmitting ten or more per second making it more accurate.

Those are all true points but I still dont think they are all that useful and I doubt most boaters will be able to see a real difference in performance.

Keep in mind these are just my opinions as a cheep skate boater and should not stop anyone from buying a toy they really want. I do that sort of thing all the time myself Its just that, in this case, I think there is a bit of extra hype going on in the advertising.

A faster update speed wont improve position accuracy unless you are moving very fast and need to know where you are at that exact split second vrs 1/2 a second ago. The normal every day GPS possition errors are still present and are not improved by a faster up-date rate. However it will help some at speed - just not to any useful degree.

At 30 mph you travel 44 feet in one second, so getting a position update every 1/2 a second at the slowest typical GPS update speed of 2 hz, already gets you within 22 feet of where you are. Many GPS combo units already update at 5 hz, so your getting 5 updates per second already which means that at 30 mph your getting info within 9 ft of where you were 1/5 of a second ago. I dont see how increasing that to 10 hz or ten times a second helps you when your going that fast. You will now know within 4 1/2 feet vrs 22 ft at the very worst.

At hi speeds, you had better be watching where you are going instead of looking at the screen anyway If you are in fog then you better not be going that fast either. Even at 60 mph your only talking a max improvement of 44 feet at the worst down to 10 feet at the best with a Point One. It would be fun to know your location was that much more up to date but hardly useful or critical to safety. At 60 mph you can't react that much faster anyway.

As far as the compass bearing info, that could be useful if you were using a paper chart and or navigating by hand, but in real time its far more important to know your course over ground - which your chart plotter already gives you. When was the last time you had someone ask you to steer a course of 110 degrees? Even if they did, you can still get that same info from your existing GPS as soon as the boat starts moving - and that course over ground already allows for any cross current or cross wind - which a compass heading wont - unless you know how to compensate. But if you dont know the wind and current directions and speeds and can do the vector math in your head, it wont do you any good. Again, it would be a fun thing to have, but not all that useful.

Also, unless you really understand the difference between COG, bearing and heading, you can get yourself in trouble steering by the compass.

As far as safety, I already have a regular magnetic compass on board in case I loose power to the GPS chart plotter in poor visibility or off shore. A powered unit like the Point One wont help you get home if you blow a fuse.

Again, it sounds like a fun thing to add to the boat and will increase up-date speeds and accuracy to a degree - but not enough to make a real everyday difference in your boating.

In my opinion of course

Thanks guys, that is the same information I came up with up with as well but wanted to make sure I was not missing something. Will give the regular unit a chance and see how it preforms compared to the HDI 5 unit that was enough for what I needed it to do. I also have a back up magnetic compass on board for those ah shi* moments, better safe then sorry. I will update this so others can read my opinion on the unit just in case they are thinking the same thing. I see alot of these unit in use on other boats was the main reason for thinking it might be a good idea to upgrade.

Until next time tight lines!!

Like I said originally, the only reason why you would really NEED one of these is if you had poor GPS reception where your chart plotter was mounted. That can be the case with some cabin cruisers or boats with hard tops or if you want to dash mount the plotter for example - which would hide the built-in antenna.