In the last function bar of the full-screen echosounder view, you will find all of the echosounder views available on the Raymarine echo sounder.

Sonar View

The first view is the Sonar colour view. The colour gradient goes from blue (extremely soft) to green (soft) to red (hard). The deeper the red colour of a displayed object or the bottom, the stronger the signal that returns to the transducer, indicating a harder object or a closer proximity to the boat. This allows for a clear differentiation between hard and soft bottoms based on the colour display.

This view has a wide scanning range (see image below) and is perfect for locating fish as it provides a broad field of view and displays objects in front of and beside the boat in the sonar display. It is compared to the DownScan because the range of the DownScan cone is not as wide.

One of the strengths of the Sonar view is the fish identification, which is represented by arcs. The larger the arc, the larger the fish. The deeper the red colour of the arc, the closer the fish is to the boat. This allows for clear differentiation between the size and distance of the fish.

The downside of the Sonar view is that it is not particularly effective at detecting structures such as branches, underwater plants, or rocks. In such cases, the DownVision function is the preferred choice.

The Sonar view is the only echo sounder view that is constantly running, even when it is not actively displayed. The DownVision, on the other hand, starts recording only when it is selected as one of the views.