The Garmin 496...a teenager's review

It's amazing that you're the only one to think of this. Congratulations!

Look around at the demographic of pilots nowadays. I'm 48, and I'm
still considered the "Young Guy" at the airport -- which is the reason
so few pilots apparently grasp how truly clunky the 496 is to use.
Garmin is not dealing with a generation that has grown up with a mouse
in our hands, and most pilots have nothing to compare the 496 against.

My son does. And his observations were right on the money.

And, quite frankly, Garmin is still the only "all-in-one-box" weather
option. As long as Lowrance and AvMap continue to sit on their hands
regarding weather, Garmin has little incentive to improve.

Trouble is, weather is so important that many of us (me included) have
been willing to put up with almost ANY performance in order to get it
in the panel. XM weather has changed flying so dramatically for us
that I'd be willing to use a stone tablet in order to get it whilst
airborne. But it really took a 16-year-old's perspective to make it
clear exactly how slow the unit really is.

Sadly, now that my unit is panel docked, I'm pretty much married to
the display size, so I hope Garmin leaves that unchanged. (Even
though I would LOVE a bigger screen.) And I don't find the user
interface to be bad at all -- in fact, I love it. They got that
right, IMHO.

But I truly hope they eventually do something about the screen refresh
rate, cuz all of us -- Mary, me, and now Joe -- want to punch the
panel while we're waiting for that stupid screen to refresh after
slewing the cursor to the next METAR reporting station...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"