I have a humminbird 386i right now and am looking to upgrade .I'm looking at getting a Lowrance Elite-7 CHIRP. The maps on the humminbird look awful. From what i have seen the Lowrance look good. Any pros cons with the elite-7 and using reefmaster?

There are no cons in upgrading from the 386ci imo. Elite7 is a great fishfinder and works well with Reefmaster.

The only cons of the Elite is that it can't do some of the things the HDS can (more colours, transparency, etc)

Reefmaster works very well with the elite 7 and you can make some excellent bathymetric charts - had no problems with mine and was very pleased with results when worked on my data in rm. However, if I could go back in time, I'd probably have gone for the hds touch (v 2 or now the 3) with the in built structure scan... The SS looks very impressive in rm. Infact, I'm in the process of upgrading to one for the summer! The price of the hds 2 has also come down a bit since v3 came out, but if you do go for the hds, make sure you go for the touch as the ordinary hds doesn't have inbuilt structure scan and you'd have to get a separate SS unit.

I am also thinking about buying a chirp sonar and at first the elite 7 chirp seemed nice. But, is it true that with elite you cannot switch between bottom composition and depth maps created by RM? Also, they say it is much slower than HDS? Is CHIRP technology worth it?

Elite CHIRP vs Elite HDI
Since Elite CHIRP is not compatible with Airmars CHIRP-ducers, the difference in sonar between the two is slight. CHIRP does have an edge over HDI in water deeper then 40-50 meters but the difference in sonar-quality is by no means in the same league as the difference was between Elite HDI and the older Elite-models. The chartplotter in Elite CHIRP is however a lot faster den Elite HDI, since it has a different and faster chipp. Elite CHIRP will according to my sources get a software-update later in 2015 that bringe it up to the same software as present HDS Gen 2 (button-version).

Thanks a lot for the input guys now I want the hds touch. I normally wont be going in more than 20M of water so not having chirp is probably not a big deal? Only problem is now im looking at over $1000 for a fish finder. what to do.....

Does anybody know how this chirp technology work for depths up to 120m? Are there any problems with BC function when using chirp? Is that data usable for BC mapping? I certainly wouldn't like to lose nice maps and everything I have now for something that I might not even need (chirp?). At the time I payed nice amount of money for structure scan module and now I am not using it at all:( - I usually fish deeper than 30m...

I would not recommend using CHIRP for deep mapping and BC. The reason beeing that you have no controll over what part of the frequenzy-band that would reach bottom. For shallow water (less then 50 meters) using a "real" CHIRP-ducer from Airmar, this should not be a problem, but in really drap water I would set my CHIRP-system to fixed frequenzy in order to controll both bandwith and coneangle.

Thanks Team Colibri! It's a very useful information. As far as I think now I would rather have my maps (BC) than a bit more distinguished fish targets:-)

The beauty of CHIRP is that you can have both. ;) For mapping you run your CHIRP-ducer in fixed frequenzy, when just looking for fish you run full on CHIRP.

Not a bad idea! Maybe if this elite 7 becomes as usefull and as fast as HDS (at least as the button gen2 HDS). I don't need structure scan, have no need for connecting more units... Actually, Elite 7 chirp has it all for me. It is just that I would like to have my BC and depth maps and have the ability to toggle them on water. If the new Elite will have it all, it will be my first choice when I decide to change my HDS gen1.

Elite CHIRP will not come close to the CHIRP-capabilities of HDS, unless they become compatible with Airmars CHIRP-ducers. Your HDS Gen 1 can however already use these ducers when combined with modules like SonarHub or BSM-3.