Garmin’s new GPSMap 296 has a super crisp TTN color display and a highly detailed terrain database. Its overall size and shape is nearly identical to the 196 introduced two years ago.

by Paul Bertorelli

Some years ago, a bureaucrat in an airless warren at the FAA’s Washington headquarters hatched a profoundly bad idea: he thought the FAA should write some rules to govern how portable GPS navigators were used in aircraft. Maybe some design standards for yoke mounts, flight testing of Velcro patches, that sort of thing. Fortunately, this loser never got beyond the interoffice memo stage but we have to think products like the new Garmin 296 give the FAA’s deeper thinkers throat-searing heartburn. …