Talon Technologies is a New Zealand Company specialising in contract manufacturing for some of the larger International electronics providers such as VDO USA, Standard Communications USA and Shakespeare USA. The Company was founded ten years ago and is going from strength to strength, successfully tendering against giants like Humminbird for component contracts on American luxury powercraft like Bayliner.
Talon's specialties are Autopilot, GPS, Chartplotter and Sounder manufacture. A long term strategic alliance with the Rockwell Corporation has seen them produce GPS patch antennas for the American automotive industry. This makes them one of the most accomplished small companies around in marine electronics, not to mention the only sounder and recreational GPS manufacturer in the southern hemisphere.
Down-Under sentiment alone should arouse curiosity among the prospective sounder buyer, even though those Kiwis did beat us in the America's Cup!

Features:
The Navman F440 is a basic entry level sounder pitched at the around $400 market with a complete list of features and the typically high specifications in power that accompany most LCD sounders these days. Receiver sensitivity is stated in the specifications, (30 micro volts RMS) and this is a bit of a first as there is generally a shroud of mystery surrounding this figure... more on this later.
The Navman F440 is a generally tidy little package which is attractively designed and relatively easy to use.
The Navman F440 has five modes of operation. These comprise a standard echo mode where normal transducer information is displayed along with digital depth, this can also be displayed with Analogue-Scope. There are two fish display modes, with and without A-Scope and a straight data page. Analogue-Scope, or A-Scope allows the right hand side of a sounder screen to show what is happening directly under the boat, this is a must for anchoring or getting a proper array of swearwords together on the days when the fish are there, but not biting.
The Navman F440 is not the most basic of the range as it has Speed, Temperature and Triplog available as a standard functions, and unlike similarly priced offerings there is a calibration feature with each of these so you can believe what you see to some extent. For those not familiar with this function, it enables you to adjust speed, or temperature to the correct figure if either are known to be wrong. Triplog of course can be reset as required. Units of MPH, Knots or KPH are selectable as are degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius.
All functions on The Navman F440 are menu driven and navigation information such as Depth, Speed and distance travelled can be selected for full screen display if needed. The standard array of sounder features are all there, things like white line, alarms, A-scope and fish display, with Zoom being a notable absence. In place of Zoom or Shift displays there is a depth range feature that allows any area from the bottom to a definable mid water depth to be selected for full screen display, or from the surface to mid water.
Contrast, Backlighting, Gain Deep, Shallow and fish alarms are present as well as automatic or manual range and Gain modes. The Navman F440 has a temperature compensation circuit to provide for the effect of the sun on LCS displays, but it's not advisable to position any LCD in brutal sunlight as they tend to resent it a bit after the unit exceeds melting point.
By and large The Navman F440 has a complete range of functions which is surprising in a budget sounder.

Display:
The resolution of this sounder is not exceptionally fine, but on par with similarly priced offerings. Contrast is variable and backlighting has seven levels of intensity, giving a suitable night fishing display. While the display
is a bit blocky, it performs as well as any similarly priced competitor. Perhaps the only criticism I have is the dull colour of the display which can be a little indistinct at night, but does not overly detract from the performance of the unit. Receiver Sensitivity has been reduced a tad to avoid excessive extraneous noise, but I prefer to use gain to do this as low receiver sensitivity will mask essential information such as bait fish, bottom hardness etc, but hey! this is just a cheapie.

Sea Test:
The Navman F440 performed reasonably well at sea, although we didn't venture to deep water. I found the controls just a little less than intuitive, but not at all difficult to master. The bottom display was on par with similarly priced units, but not altogether outstanding. There is the mixed blessing of a lack of low level echoes which may please some people because they won't be trying to guess which is a fish and which isn't. Fish sizes in the Autofish mode vary according to echo strength and this may be useful to some. At 60 metres, The Navman F440 performed well enough and I feel confident in the 160 metre maximum specification.

Summary:
The $400 range sounders are generally a very basic unit throughout the industry. When appraising these sounders I have to check myself a bit as far as performance expectations are concerned. If one of these units provides half satisfactory performance I tend to be surprised, and The Navman F440 does this. For the money you get satisfactory performance and a lot of extra features, so I'd have to say this is a good entry level sounder. I'll be looking forward to the later revisions and big brothers of this unit.

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