Just took delivery of a Lowrance Elite 7 Ti, got it through the Lowrance factory outlet store which is very loosely connected to Lowrance. First thing I found was the unit does not come with an operators manual, only an installation and quick start manual. When I called Lowrance they said the manual is in the unit already, and no hard copy comes with it. They suggested I download and print the manual. Really, $800 for a unit and no manual, come on. I called a number of different numbers and got one tech who sympathized and said they are getting a lot of unfavorable feedback on that issue.
I got the Hotmaps North to load into the unit, very good detail even for the Turtle Flambeau flowage but no structure or fishing hot spots as in prior Hotmaps. I called Navionics about that and they said they had to be deleted because of licensing issues.
Other than the the total scan transducer and unit seem to be pretty good. Have not used em yet, plan on using it on the front of my boat with the transducer mounted on a titelok unit suspended in the water when I am on the trolling motor. When I am on the main motor I will be using my HDS 8 with the structure scan.
I have noted that the battery seems to go down fast when in structure scan mode, hopefully the Elite 7 is more energy friendly. Hope to be able to pivot the transducer to forward scan when I am moving on the trolling motor. Should help me avoid the rocks and stumps on the Turtle Flambeau Flowage.
Oh, the unit came with a free extra years warranty that you had to fill a form out and email to navico. The address they gave was extwarranty.navico.com obviously not a good email address. Took a number of calles to the factory outlet and lowrance to get that corrected. Nothing like professional performance, errrgggghhh.