Lowrance M68C S/Map review

Yakass Home

Lowrance M68C S/Map review

Author: josh

Published on Wednesday, 30 June 2010 07:44

Written by Josh

alt

alt When I first purchasded my Lowrance M68C 'S/MAP' sounder-GPS combo unit I mentioned that as soon as I've had enough time to truly put it through it's paces, I'd cough up a full review - here it is. Starting out with a disclaimer of sorts, if you came here looking to find out more on the inner workings of this unit, or pros and cons to it's design and construction, you came to the wrong review. What follows is a description on what the unit is like to use and how dependable and suitable it is for kayak fishing applications. But if you're too lazy to read on further, take it from me that this device will do what it claims and will keep on working through conditions where many others would probably fail.

Typically, so called waterproof devices are most often proven otherwise when used in coastal kayak fishing scenarios (especially on a sailing trimaran style) so it's truly refreshing to be able to confirm that the M68C from Lowrance is indeed waterproof and thus far has stood up to a deluge of aquatic abuse rather impressively. Personally this hasn't come as a big shock to me because that has been my experience with similar units such as the X50DS and X67C as well. Not only has my unit been submerged under waves of crashing salt water on numerous occaissions, it's also survived frequent hosings while rinsing it down after use. And so far it hasn't missed a beat and not once suffered from moisture penetration, resulting in an unreadable screen.

The M68C screen is a high-brightness 3.5" (8.9cm) diagonal 256-color 1/4 VGA active matrix TFT transflective LCD. Users coming from a greyscale sounder will find the screen to be eye-candy by comparison but the colours are certainly more than cosmetic. Not only does it make the unit easier to read in any light condition, it also provides the user with more information. An example of this is baitballs, which will render with blotches of red at the highest points of bio-mass concentration.

Its transducer seems to do a pretty good job of sounding up accurate readings, capable of detecting a medium sized lure bouncing around near the bottom underneath the boat. Of course it's also capable of picking up fish reasonably clearly, which mine is doing just fine using an in-hull instalation set up. The box packaged unit comes with everything you need for an external mount as well.

So far this unit is responsible for locating some of the better fish I've caught recently. The M68C doesn't just help me spot fish whenever the transducer picks them out but has been even more useful as a tool to mark points of interest, such as areas fo high fish activity of promising looking structure (or both). This is a role that I use to employ my hand-held GPS for, but now prefer to use the inbuilt GPS in the sounder unit instead. Its far easier to simply lean forward and press a couple of buttons to take a mark using the machine I am eyeing, instead of having two have 2 units powered up. A good deal of my marks are actually taken as soon as a fish strikes, and by comparison this was difficult to do using separate GPS and sounder units. My handheld unit (also a Lowrance) now lives in my safety box and is used for navigation and or backup purposes only and the M68C is now responsible for recording fish marks and navigating back to them. Whilst the navigation screens in the M68C are fairly simplistic they are certainly good enough for navigating between fish marks.

Like other Lowrance sounders I have experience with, instalation was fairly straight forward. I opted for a an in-hull instalation with the transducer positioned near the stern of the kayak, underneath the rear hatch. Its battery - a 9AH 12volt motorcycle battery - lives in a Hobie gear bucket nestled into the rear hatch, which also powers an electrical bilge pump. Batterly life for this unit is fairly impressive, providing me with at least 12 hours running time per charge with the backlight turned on. Not bad... not bad at all.

When I first wrote about the M68C I commented that it's price (from the supplier I was aware of) was fairly high so I'm pleased to now report that those prices have fallen significantly, dropping down from over $900 to somewhere just over $600. Being one of Hobie's preferred units, the M68C (alongside the X50DS and M67C) are available at all commited Hobie dealers. The X67C, also a colour unit, now sells for just under $300 and is the next best choice for someone who can't afford the GPS equipped M68C.