A portable fish finder can offer plenty of advantages, especially to the weekend angler. And if you’re looking for portable fish finders without GPS and chartplotting, maybe the biggest advantage that one can mention is the affordable price. 

The second advantage of a depth finder like this is that it’s very useful if you can’t bring your own boat on a certain lake, and you have to use a rental, or a friend’s boat. In other words, a portable fish finder is really flexible.

There are quite a few cheap Hummingbird fish finders which are portable, easy to install on almost any small boat, canoe or kayak. In this post I will point out 3 of them.

1. Humminbird PiranhaMax 230 Portable. 

This Hummingbird fish finder is one of the best models in the PiranhaMax series. Even if the screen is black and white, it’s a very reliable tool for finding fish, measuring depth and water temperature. It works great in waters up to 600 feet deep. It has a Dual Beam Sonar, allowing you to scan for fish in two frequencies: at 60° and at 20°.

2. Humminbird PiranhaMax 160 Portable.

This is a smaller model than the Hummingbird Fish Finder PiranhaMax 230 Portable. It’s also a unit with a greyscale screen, 160 x 128 pixel resolution. Doesn’t have any fancy features, like chartplotting, Side Imaging or Down Imaging, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good unit for locating fish. This unit also has Dual Beam sonar and it works fine in waters up to 600ft. deep.

3. Humminbird 345c Portable.

This is a superior unit to the first two that I’ve just mentioned here. It has a color screen and a 320 x 240 pixel resolution. Of course, it has Dual Beam sonar, but this one is more effective than the sonar of the previous two. This unit is designed to provide you with accurate returns if you’re fishing in waters up to 1000 feet deep. 

Now, these are the cheapest 3 portable fish finders that I know. They’re all great tools for fish finding, and you can only improve your angling experience with any of them. 

Find more details about each one of them here: hummingbirdfishfinderreviews.com

Have you been using a Hummingbird Fish Finder with chartplotting and GPS possibilities? Well, I have to tell you that once I got my 998c SI Combo unit, I just became indispensable for my boat. The navigational possibilities of the Humminbird chartplotters are just amazing and I have to say that without it on my boat I feel kinda lost now.

Anyway, the reason I’m writing this post is to let you know about two important features that the Best Hummingbird Fish Finders come with. The built-in CountourXD and the UnitMap cartography and mapping systems.

Hummingbird Fish Finders - About ContourXD

The ContourXD is a mapping package features by the 700, 800, 900 and 1100 series. The Humminbird units in the 700 series that have this feature are: 798ci HD SI Combo, 788ci HD DI Combo and 788ci HD Combo.

CountourXD by Humminbird, comprises a database of over 3,000 U.S. lakes. ContourXD maps describe the depth contour lines, so you will be able to understand better where the all the drops, bumps and channels holding fish are situated.  The maps will also include U.S. lights/markers, and major roads and interstates, so you will be able to take a shortcut and be on the water in the shortest time possible, locate a hot fishing spot quickly, even if it’s your first time on a certain lake.

Hummingbird Fish Finders - About UniMap

The UnitMap cartography system is actually the little brother of ContourXD. It’s a hydrographic map package featured by several of the best Hummingbird Fish Finder models in the 500 and 300 series. You can benefit from UnitMap by using the following Hummingbird chartplotters: 597ci HD Combo, 587ci HD Combo, 581i Combo, 385ci Combo, and 365i Combo.

UniMap covers the continental U.S. coastline and the in-land lakes and rivers at rate of 30 meters / pixel resolution. The charts are pretty accurate, which makes a cheaper Hummingbird unit like the 587ci HD Combo, or the 385ci Combo to be quite a reliable navigational device.

These are two mapping packages your Hummingbird Depth Finder usually comes with. However, if you choose a top fish finder from Humminbird, like the 1198c SI Combo, or the 998c SI Combo, they are compatible with Navionics Platinum, which will give you an unprecedented image of the underwater environment, with 3D images and satelite photos of the area.