I was listening to a podcast yesterday and they mentioned lowrance came out with a Eagle Eye unit that has live sonar that is somewhat affordable for the everyday/weekend/fun fisherman. It looks like for $1000 you can get a 9" screen with trolling motor transducer with DI/SI/Live Sonar. Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of these? Im assuming the live sonar wouldn't be as good as active target at this price point, but is it good enough to make it worth the purchase.

I dont fish enough to drop thousands of dollars on active target 2 or livescope, but wont be nice to have access to it.

You and I are in a similar boat. I bought one of these when it came out. It does NOT have side imaging. It does have a nice gps map, DI, 2D traditional sonar, and live forward and down imaging. The affordability comes from the live sonar transducer. You only have the cone pointing down and the 45 degree one going forward. You can change your depth and distance to optimize the amount of screen the “dead” area takes up, but you lose any live Images from about 15’ and closer. For me, it has been a great unit and didn’t break the bank. I fish out of the pelican 10 NXT from bass pro, and I made my own mount and pole. Because of this, I can angle the transducer so that I don’t lose much of the close imaging when I am close to a brush top for crappie. I have caught quite a few using it, and am still learning. Most of the time I am 20’ or further away anyway so losing up close doesn’t bother me. When not in deep water, I don’t like to get on top of them anyway as they get spooky.