NDS Baitboat with Integrated Sonar

How well is it built?

NDS have gone for a full camo finish on the hull, and from above you can see the big central bait well with a bar running down the middle and a clear light housing on each front corner.

It's a tidy, rounded shape, and I like that the propellers are part of an integrated weedless system built to resist snags from weed and debris.

The motors are brushless, which I'd always want on a boat at this level because they run smoothly and there's less to wear out. There are two LEDs at the front and two at the rear, so it's easy to follow in low light.

It comes in a hard travel case, which is the right way to carry a boat with sonar built in, and two battery packs are in the box.

For me it looks like a sensible, well thought out platform, but I don't think it's built to the standard of the Toslon X or the Deeper Quest, and the score reflects that.

What are the features like?

This is where the NDS earns its place. The triple-beam sonar runs at 680kHz, 200kHz and 100kHz, giving you a high, mid and low frequency beam for detail and depth coverage, and it all shows up in the NDS Fish Finder App alongside mapping and automatic area scanning.

That's a proper set of tools for finding gravel, silt and drop-offs before you bait.

The GPS module saves your spots and has a return-home function, and you can put five favourite locations on the handset for one-touch return. Action Groups, unlocked through the app, let you string up to 20 commands into one sequence.

The snag is that autopilot is sold separately as an unlock, and on a boat at this price I'd expect it included. The Rippton CatchX Max gives you autopilot as standard, so you need to factor that in when you compare them.

Performance & Handling

On paper the NDS is built to carry a lot rather than go fast. Up to 4kg of bait is a big load, and it's double what the NDS Baitboat Camo carries, so you can put a decent bed of bait out in one run.

The flip side is the pace and the range, because the brushless motors give it a 0.9 m/s top speed and the control range is 200 to 300 metres depending on conditions, which is shorter than the Rippton CatchX Max or the Deeper Quest.

For most day ticket lakes that's plenty, but on a big pit I'd want more in hand.

Two eight-cell battery packs give up to 2.5 hours or 9km of running, which should cover a session's baiting if you're sensible with it. The one-handed handset and the weedless propellers are both pluses when you're steering it into weedy margins or along a tree line.

Is it good value for money?

The NDS sits just under the Rippton CatchX Max on price and well below the Toslon X and the Deeper Quest, so it's one of the cheaper ways to get sonar, GPS and a 4kg hopper in one boat.

You also get two battery packs, the handset, a USB charger with a UK and EU adapter, a USB-C cable and the hard case, so the only extra is the autopilot unlock if you want it.

That unlock is what holds the score back for me, along with the modest range and speed. The Rippton CatchX Max gives you more features for a little more money.

It suits carp anglers who want to find features with sonar and bait heavily in one run, fish lakes where 200 to 300 metres is enough, and are happy to pay extra later if they want the boat to drive itself.