I have the 898SI's on my helm and bow and have only had the HB's on my boats. The 898's are good units and the maps are adequate for were I fish. I troll a lot and they accurately show the structure where I toll. I haven't used other brands so I can't compare.
The helm 898 came with the boat and I added the one to the bow and basically went with HB to keep everything the same. If I were starting over, I would look hard at the Lowrance, however. I added an ethernet network to my boat and you have to buy a couple of network switches and converters to interface the HB's and it added around $300 to the cost of the network. I also have my engine on the network (using Lowrance interfaces) and there are some things you can't view because HB isn't very compatible with the NMEA 2K stuff. Lowrance has put a lot of effort in developing NMEA 2K compatibility. If you want to network your boat at some point, I would look hard at Lowrance.
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