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| Despite some heavy-duty abuse, the iFinder kept working. |
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Hands of Fury: Lowrance iFinder H2O
The down-side to hand-held electronics: they get dropped, dunked, dinged and destroyed on a regular basis. How many times have you seen a hand-held unit slide off the dash and crash to the deck? Slide from a shirt pocket into the livewell? Fall from a V-berth or countertop? It happens all the time, and if your handheld isn’t built tough, it won’t survive for long. That’s why I invited several manufacturers of marine electronics handheld units to participate in the Lenny Rudow Torture Test. Lowrance was one of them, and their iFinder was the victim.
The iFinder H2O features a three-inch, 240 x 180 pixel screen, a watertight casing with rubber ringing the seal, and a 12-channel WAAS-assisted GPS receiver. It also features a built-in Lowrance background map, which we need to talk about for a bit before we move on to busting this thing to pieces: most built-in background maps on handheld GPS units are relatively poor on marine data. Few show area names, fewer show depths and contours, and some don’t even show markers. If you want this stuff, you usually have to pony up extra cash to get the data, and upload it into the machine in one way or another. But the iFinder H2O’s background map is sweet; it includes the aforementioned details and is one of the best “background” maps you’ll see, so far as marine data goes.
I set out to use… um, abuse… this unit and the others I pressed into service in a fashion that reflected real-world use. To start off, I lined them up on the dash of my boat, nailed the throttle, and watched as they slid off and crashed to the deck. Then I dropped them into a cooler with live, kicking fish. At the boat ramp I tossed them overboard in shallow water. (Note – the iFinder actually floats!) And I even lined the units up, then backed the trailer over them.
After this barrage of electronics bashing, the iFinder was more or less unscathed. There were a couple of small scratches in the faceplate and a few droplets of water made their way into the battery compartment. But it was still working fine—I’d have to try harder.
At home, I turned the iFinder and the other units over to my kids. After all, who’s better at breaking things then a few seven year old boys? The kids had a ball sliding the iFinder down the (uncarpeted) stairs. They clapped the handhelds together. They piled them up on a sheet, then used it to trampoline them into the air. Still the iFinder survived. So, for a final “test,” the kids took turns throwing the units into the toilet, and flushing.
At the end of the day, the iFinder was still running strong. The moisture that got into the battery compartment did not make it into the main unit, and months later, it still works great with no signs of failure or damage other then those scratches. Lowrance, I salute you for a job well done. This is one tough-as-nails unit, and anyone can buy one feeling secure in the knowledge that pretty much no matter what they do to it, the iFinder H2O is going to keep working.
Price: Just over $200
The Highs: Slam, bam, thank you Lowrance this thing just won’t die! Love the background map’s marine detail level. And, is it really this inexpensive?
The Lows: I’m drawing a blank.
Who Wants It: Mariners who want an (essentially) indestructible handheld GPS at the helm.
Contact: www.lowrance.com.
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