Knowing the depth of the water under a boat is very important for the crew of the respective vessel, due to the fact that going in too shallow waters could lead to some pretty nasty effects (the same actually applying for very deep water as well). For this reason, the Humminbird company has released the HDR 610 P depth sounder, a device that can point out the depth beneath a ship with a very high level of accuracy and in the simplest possible manner.



As expected, the HDR 610 P is based on a single-beam sonar system, which delivers a narrow, 20-degree beam for precision, focused on the bottom and fish in heavy structure or close to the bottom and providing a very good image of the bottom. The beam delivers a coverage area equal roughly to one third of the depth.



The device provides some pretty good imaging features (200 kHz / 20-degree @ -10db), and also offers a rather impressive functioning range, of down to 600 feet (182 meters). Additionally, it provides shallow and deep depth alarms, and delivers the recorded depth in either feet, meters and fathoms, depending on the user's choice.



In order to display the gathered data, the depth sounder has been equipped with a 1.25-inch LCD display, which features a backlight system (for nighttime viewing). Moreover, the case of the HDR 610 P is waterproof, which means that it will probably resist if accidentally dropped in the water. For even more convenience, the device can even be wired to the ignition switch for automatically switching on when powering up the boat.



The HDR 610 P can be found at several retailers for around 100 US dollars, which is a pretty fair price to pay for this device, taking into account just how useful it could prove to be for certain categories of users.