OK, I know there are a few of you out there that know about everything about these units, I had a question on quality and price. I recieved a Bass Pro Shops clearence catalog and it had a 240 Red, I'm assuming it is a red because the color of the lettering is red. Is that correct? Also they have it listed for $249 for the unit after rebate, good price? I'm no where near loyal to Bass Pro, but if that is a good price???
Thanks,

NEN

I'll let AkKings comment on the price for a 240 red and whether it's a good deal or not...that sure is a hell of a lot cheaper than what I paid for my 240 blue.

For the money the 160 Blue ($239-$25 rebate) is a better deal, the red series is lower power (400watt rms) then the blue (500 watt), it is also a single 200kz unit, the blue is dual frequency 50/200 khz, and the blue also comes with speed & temp. no speed on the red series.

Last week I got on basspro website to order the same 240 and was surprised to see it listed for $199. I ordered it right away and have already received it with the speed and temp included. Came out to $213 with tax and shipping. It is by far the best price I have seen. I have 3 friends who use them and they are all happy with it.

After the rebate the 160 Blue is $215, thats $2 well spent $'s for 100w more power and 10 degree or 40 degree cone angles as opposed to a single 20 degree cone. dual frequency is second in importance next to power in my opinion in selecting a fishfinder.

an extra 100 watts and 50 khz signal= best money you could spend at twice the price, I can't begin to tell you how much structure and how many fish show up on one frequency but not the other, with just the 200khz signal you are literally missing almost half the picture, and in the salt power is everything.
I have said before I have a 200khz/50khz 200 watt alpeco(raymarine)265 that I'll let you have for 75 bones, and I would love to unload it, but if you fish in salt I can garauntee you don't want it. My garmin with 500watts is the best buy I could have made. I think I spent an extra 2 or 3 hundred on my plotter/sounder to get all the features I wanted and it was a bargain.
Buck up and spend the coin on what you know you will be happy with.

You guys forgot to mention another important factor: resolution. The more pixels, the better the representation of what's down there. Say you're in 40 feet of water. A screen that has 160 vertical pixels is going to show 1 pixel on the screen for every 4 inches of depth. That means if you see a fish at 30 feet down, it's going to show up as at most 3 dots on the screen. If you had a finder that had 240 veritcal pixels, you'd have 1 pixel for every 2 inches of depth, giving you a much better picture of what's down there. Now, say you had a finder with 320 vertical pixels. You'd have 1 pixel for every 2/3rds of an inch of depth. This goes for structure too. The more pixels you have, the better the representation of what the sonar itself is actually 'seeing'.

If you're not hung up on getting a Garmin, I'd suggest looking at the Eagle FishMark 320 or SeaFinder 320DF. I just got a FishMark 320 myself from Cabela's, and it arrived in the mail yesterday. While I haven't been out on the water with it yet, I've played around with it extensively, both my real one, and the emulator Eagle has up on their web site. I must say, it's quite impressive. 320 pixels, and 1500 watts peak to peak. The SeaFinder 320DF has the same specs, but higher wattage and dual frequency, 4000 peak to peak. I got mine for lake fishing, so I went with the FishMark as it was a little cheaper, and was the only one offered in the portable version, but if you fish saltwater and have a regular boat, then you might want to look at the SeaFinder. The FishMark 320 runs $200, and the SeaFinder $240.

Here's the link from Cabela's:

FishMark 320 and SeaFinder 320DF at Cabela\'s

And here's the link to emulator software for both Eagle units:

Eagle sonar emulators

Arklier, good points about the resolution, that would probably be 3rd on my list of important features, and in this price range ($250) the 320 DF is hard to beat, my only hesitation with the new Eagle's is I'm not sure that they have got the bugs worked out, we've sold alot of them in the past month but I haven't got any feedback on them yet. As for the Fishmark, its a very good freshwater unit but too weak (188w RMS) IMHO for serious saltwater use. Would recommend 300+watts RMS for saltwater use.

Thanks guys, I will hold off on the 240 Red, whats the price for a blue, I think I should stay under 300.

Thanks, NEN

Our price is $350 (BoatersWorld) plus Garmin is offering a $25 rebate thru the end of the month.