Humminbird 410210-1 HELIX 5 CHIRP GPS G2 Fish Finder Review

One of the main reasons why people purchase pontoon boats is that they want to enjoy a relaxing fishing session. If you’re part of that category, then you know for sure how annoying is to not find the fish anywhere in a big lake. As such, a fish finder is the next sensible investment, in order to make sure not a single fish in the lake is out of your sight. Here’s a review for the Humminbird 410210-1 HELIX 5 CHIRP GPS G2 Fish Finder .

Brief overview:

The Humminbird 410210-1 HELIX 5 CHIRP GPS G2 Fish Finder comes with the transducer in the box, which many other fishfinders don’t, and it has GPS as well as an SD card slot. The size is 1.1 x 7.6 x 4.3 inches, with a 5” color screen, and it weighs just a bit over 3.5 pounds. It doesn’t have a particularly complex interface, but this actually works in its favor. With its strong processor, it will work without fail, every time, even with an SD card inserted. In short, if you want an easy to use fish finder that does its job consistently, this is the thing you’re looking for.

Obviously, when you get a fish finder, you expect it to find fish for you. We’re glad to say that Humminbird 410210-1 HELIX 5 CHIRP GPS G2 Fish Finder performs great in that aspect. As said above, it should come with the transducer in the box, at least when you buy it from an authorized Humminbird retailer, but remember to check beforehand as there may be some retailers who don’t include it.

An excellent asset which allows for better fish detection is the color screen. In certain circumstances, experienced fishermen can even guess the species by looking at the size of the swimming bladder, displayed as a yellow dot in the center of the fish.

Depth finding

The sonar can offer you DI up to 1500 ft (2500 ft with optional purchase transducer), or at least that’s what the company advertises.

There are two important factors on which the accuracy depends. First, if your speed is too high, you will not be able to get an accurate reading. Generally, if you want a clear reading of both depth and fish presence, you will have to go under 15mph. Second, there may be certain turbulence affecting the reading if the transducer is mounted incorrectly or in an inappropriate place. Do not mount the transducer anywhere near the engine if you’re planning to use the engine, or the vibrations will affect the image a great deal. If, on the other hand, you have a trolling motor, you can put the transducer pretty much anywhere you want, as the vibrations from it are fairly insignificant in comparison.

Screen

The screen resolution is 800×480. This may seem unbecoming for a 5” screen, which, at only 133ppi, is probably a far cry from the FHD screen of your smartphone.

However, don’t let your inner nerd be deceived. The screen is definitely good enough for the task it’s performing and, most importantly, the glare-free function is top-notch. This means that even when the sun is high and you couldn’t see anything on your smartphone’s screen if it were to save your life, your Humminbird’s screen will be perfectly readable from the other side of your boat.

Installation

Due to the way pontoon boats are built, the installation of your fish finder, regardless of model, is bound to take a bit more time than you’d expect. There are also a couple of things which are not included in the box and you will definitely need when installing the fish finder. Here’s a short list:

• Six 1/4” (6mm) stainless steel bolts, 1.25” (3cm) long, six stainless steel nuts and washers
• 20’ (6m) of electrical shroud, i.e. the coiled plastic tubing which protects electrical wires. It should only be large enough in diameter to wrap nicely around the transducer wire, so 1/4”-3/4” (6-18mm) should do just fine
• Two power connectors
• One tube of silicone – optional for a pontoon boat, but highly recommended

Ease of use

As stated above, there are two important characteristics in a Humminbird that you will definitely appreciate: it’s simple and it works. By comparison, a Lowrance is quite an intricate, customizable piece of machinery. You can do lots and lots of marvelous things with it, but you need an ungodly amount of technical and practical knowledge – not necessarily for using it as such, but mostly for fixing it if you screw up.

The Humminbird, on the other hand, comes with an extremely simple and intuitive menu, which allows you the luxury of plug-and-play: you don’t even need a manual all that much, as pretty much every command is either self-explanatory or explained well enough in the menu.

Compatibility

As far as boats go, you can pretty much fit a 1500 ft (2500 ft with optional purchase transducer) on any kind of boat you want, including pontoons and traditional v-hulls. The unit can be mounted on either the gimbal or the dash, and the transducer – while designed to be transom-mounted – can be attached to other parts of the boat as well if necessary.

The iPilot Link is a GPS trolling system designed by Humminbird, which allows your fish finder to work together with your trolling motor in order to achieve optimal boat movement.

SD card

As you can probably infer from the plural used above, you can add an SD card to this unit. This obviously takes a lot of processing power, but the unnamed processor used by Humminbird appears to be more than enough to handle the stress.

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This is about all we have to say about the Humminbird 410210-1 HELIX 5 CHIRP GPS G2 Fish finder. Of course, there are many more technical details, but you can find those by simply searching the model on the official Humminbird page. To sum it up, it’s an amazing fish finder and we recommend it wholeheartedly for those who want something simple and reliable.