Is AT2 Worth The Upgrade...

[Bass_boat_boy]

Hey guys, currently running AT and it has been working great and I seem to have it dialled in. For those that have made the upgrade, is AT2 worth it? Is there still software issues? Or should I hold off? I'd like to upgrade but I'd also like to see if lowrance drops the price like they did for the original AT.

thx all

[Marc Marcantonio]

Are there issues with AT2? No.

Is it better than AT1? Yes.

Is it worth the upgrade? For me, and others who want the best or dual units, yes. For some, maybe no.

If and when the price drops, it usually means a newer version is about to be released. Likely will be a long time before that happens, but who knows?

[78Staff]

I went from AT1 to AT2. AT2 is nicer, that's a given. It has more features/views - which require an HDS Pro to use. If you are not going to use the new views (for dual AT2 units) or don't have an HDS Pro, then those features are obviously less of an incentive to upgrade.

Discarding the dual AT views and ping sync features that require an HDS Pro - there are still some things about AT2 that are an improvement. It does have a hotter image, bottom seperation is reportedly better (but hard to quantify without looking at AT1 and AT2 side side), and Scout view is marginally better on AT2 than AT1. It still has the annoyance of the "missing slice" that there are several posts discussing in this forum. And it still requires a Point 1 for accurate on screen pointer direction. And the new palettes Garmin made so popular are still horrible on AT1 or AT2 - way too much noise. I acutally liked the Lowarnce green palette fwiw.

After I upgraded, I had several ask if I though it was worth it, and after using it for a few months the best way I could answer was this. If you use FFS every day, and it's a primary tool for you, then yes I think the upgrade is worth it, especially if you have an all Lowrance system. (I have since moved to Livescope, however). You of course can offset some of the cost of the AT2 by selling the AT1, although used AT1 prices have fallen quite a bit over the past year. However if you don't use FFS every time you go out, or only use it occaisionaly, etc then imo it's not worth the price to upgrade - there's not $1700 worth of improvement there if you are not going to take advantage of the dual views or HDS Pro features.

[BigCranks]

I ran at1 for a couple years. All I could see was vertical line flashes past 30 ft. Don't know if it was the unit i had, but this winter i pulled it off and sold the carbon 12 and the at1, replaced with a garmin 126sv and lsv 34. Incredible upgrade...no comparison. I've run lowrance on everything on my boats for many years. Still running dual 12 carbons at the console, but the livescope upgrade after the sale of my previous setup made sense.

[Bass_boat_boy]

Thanks for the replys...

I'm running lives at the moment and won't be switching to a pro anytime soon. I have to say I am getting amazing clear returns with my current AT set up. I just added a fish obsessed mount to see if I can get it any better. I do think at this point if I have to upgrade to a pro to get AT2 then I'll get swap over to garmin for way less.