I used to recommend the garmin 541's to my customers who wanted a nice gps, with a decent depth finder. last time I told some one about it, he called me back and asked, "have you priced one lately?" I had no idea how much they had gone up, watch when you are shopping them because they tend to price it with out the transducer, the Lowrance units seem to be the best bang for the buck now. I've never liked the lowrance units, but the fresh water guys on the lake love them. Personally, I'd look around for a good used unit to bide your time with, if you need are ally good bottom machine, check out the commercial fishing papers, they have the real deal reman SItex and Furono bottom machines for around $700, these things look like they belong on "deadliest catch". I've seen a major across the board increase in marine electronics lately, some pretty step ones at that. I personally thing the new Ipad type tablets are going to make the boat GPS market crash soon. For $700 an I pad has a far better screen and display than $5000 Marine GPS. I have several of my customers running navionics on their Ipads that sit right beside their high $ Ray Marine and North Start units. Once they come out with a rough service model(like my Casio phone), I think they will over take the small boat market. There is already a radar and auto pilot link set up to import data from your existing NEMA data. You'll still need a power module to run the transducer, radar, and auto pilot high voltage lines, but the display and control will all be in the pad
