I have 2 kayaks. My main one has side imaging, gps etc. My spare one has just a basic black and white sonar. I recently used my spare kayak on a trip and I quickly realised just how much I rely on the better fish finder.
To me GPS and colour are must haves. Side imaging is a nice to have, it is useless 90% of the time but 10% of the time it can help you locate a piece of structure you otherwise would have missed.
If you go with side imaging you do need a bigger screen to take advantage of it. A 7 inch screen is the absolutely smallest I would go otherwise don't waste money on SI.
The ability to make your own charts is huge.
I recently just found out that Humminbird isn't the only one to offer real time homemade charts. Garmin also has that ability and even offers it on some of its cheaper fish finders(I believe only on echomap and gpsmap models though).
Garmin also has a real time sonar called panoptix that is expensive but interesting as well. I might very well consider upgrading to a Garmin in the future as I like a lot of what they offer including much better base maps and even preloaded dept charts on some units.
Ultimately all the companies offer decent fish finders, all you can do is create a list of what you want then narrow down the field and pick whichever one meets all your requirements or price point etc.
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