fish finder: Lowrance? Garmin? ...other?

I generally see Lowrance and Garmin mentioned the most so am leaning in that direction but I could definitely use some education on this topic.

What are you all using for your fish finder?
What do you like and dislike about it?
Are there any specific models to avoid?
What screen size is just too big? ...too small?

I use the Humminbird Helix 5 G2 Chirp/GPS/DI and love it. I had a Hook2 Lowrance but it was absolute garbage. It could never hold the bottom. Tried changing the transducer and that didn't work. Tried to return to Lowrance but their customer service sucks.

The Humminbird Helix 5 G2 is very powerful. The down imaging is excellent, its reliable, and its tough.

I used 5" but prior to that used a 4" Elite from Lowrance. I prefer 5" especially if running GPS with Sonar or Sonar with DI. 7" would work too but draws more power so your batteries won't last as long.

I've only heard good things about Garmin Striker and Echo units (I just bought an Echo but have not used it yet). I sell fishfinders for a living and I wouldn't buy another Hook2 from Lowrance or the Raymarine Dragonfly.

How large a screen?  How good are your eyes?  Okay, that was snarky.  Oops!

I have a 4-inch screen, a vertical 5-inch screen, and a horizontal 5-inch screen.  They're all mounted the same distance from me, give or take 4 inches, and I have no preference between them - but I will say that I spend a lot less time staring at the 4-inch screen than I do the 5-inch screens.

GRAIN OF SALT: I fly fish.  I'm not particularly looking for fish, I'm looking at depth, structure, and objects on structure.

(I own a Lorwance Elite 4, a Lowrance Hook 5 (not Hook2), and a Humminbird Helix 5 G2 Chirp/GPS/DI (same as uplandsandpiper).

I've heard nothing good about the Hook2, avoid those.
A significant difference when it comes to the Lowrance and Humminbird are their connectors.
The Lowrance uses a twist locking plug with an O ring and Humminbird uses a straight push on connector, the latter sucks.

I mostly run with Lowrance units. Far and away, my favorite is the Lowrance Elite 5 for its user-friendly features. I "upgraded" to a Hook2-5 this year, and it's fine, but I feel like it's a step down from the Elite series. The menu features aren't as intuitive as they are on the Elite. Maybe I need to spend more time messing with it, but to me, it's a PITA having to go through a dozen menus to adjust depth settings on the Hook2, when it was easy-peasy on the Elite.

Whatever you choose, I highly recommend picking a unit that includes a chart plotter/GPS feature. Not only for marking waypoints, but also for recording tracks (useful for IDing productive trolling lanes), monitoring speed, and for quickly determining current/drift direction.

I've owned a 4" Elite Lowrance, 5" Original Hook Lowrance, 7" Raymarine Dragonfly Pro, and 7" Elite-Ti Lowrance.

This is specific to Chinook fishing, which a meter isn't as useful compared to other types of fishing, notably rockfish, and some freshwater fisheries. I primarily use the meter for depth and maps. Depth to fish effectively and maps (Navionics SonarChart) to figure out new areas, and the GPS for waypoints and monitoring drift speed. A secondary use is to see if there is bait around and how much of it there is, which both influence decisions on how long I fish an area and what method I use. The tertiary use is marking fish, if I don't catch anything for a few hours and the meter doesn't give me a reason to stay I move.

The Lowrance series has been good to me, I like that they have separate plugs for the transducer and power. The power wiring is the most likely to corrode and it's a lot cheaper to replace a wire than the entire transducer. I had a lot of issues with the Dragonfly, almost all of them I was able to troubleshoot back the operating system and its memory allocation. It eventually just spit out gibberish so I sent it in under warranty (which they sent me a new one without a problem) and bought another Lowrance.

If you're new to the sport I'd just buy an entry-level model and upgrade from there. In reality, the difference between a $200 meter and a $2000 meter is probably a handful of fish in a season fishing in saltwater.

I use a Lowrance Hook 4" Chirp  (this model is before the Hook2 models came out).
Works great for me on a 9800 mAh blue brick battery - can get 1.5 days of FF/Sonar/GPS use from one battery charge.
Primary features are the GPS track, waypoints, and I really like the chirp frequency to show fish.  The FF is most helpful when kokanee fishing where it's important to find a school of fish, know the depth, target a trolling speed to know when I get bit how fast the fish like my presentation, placing my downrigger at that depth (I can see my DR ball on sonar).
I use dielectric grease on the power and transducer connections since day 1.  Even in saltwater use, I have taken great care to prevent corrosion on the terminals and the head unit.
One drawback is that the clock seems to be completely wrong and I can't adjust it to the proper time (even with manual or timezone settings). Dumb.

If I was going to buy another FF, I'd probably look seriously at Garmin, but that seems like a much higher price point for the same features as Lowrance.  You get what you pay for.