and although I'm happy with it, I could be happier. My main gripe is with the built-in charts, which are not trustworthy. I bought the Navionics charts for my Lowrance CP as an add-on. I had reported one specific error to Lowrance and never received a response. So I think Lowrance doesn't care. See the following link for reference. http://cruising.sailboatowners.com/csbb/index.cgi/md/read/id/192468/sbj/lowrance-charts-comparison/

Overall I think it's a good value for the hardware, I've had no failures (knock wood) and with the Navionics charts I have solved the main problem for about $175 . The fishfinder and close-in radar definition is excellent, and the main reason I chose the Lowrance HDS is because I wanted the broadband radar and it's still cheaper than the alternatives offered under other Simrad brands.

edit: the other "bug" I found is that I could not get heading information to be accepted over the NMEA0183 interface. I worked it until I gave up and installed an NMEA0183 to NMEA2000 converter, and then the HDS was able to read the NMEA 2000 heading info -- and that enabled the radar overlay on the chart-plotter.